Barbara Hepworth | |
---|---|
Hepworth's Family of Man in bronze, 1970, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, U.K. |
|
Birth name | Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth |
Born | 10 January 1903 Wakefield, West Yorkshire, |
Died | 20 May 1975, (age 72) St Ives, Cornwall |
Nationality | British |
Field | Sculpture |
Training | Leeds School of Art, Royal College of Art |
Movement | Modernism, Abstract art |
Influenced by | Henry Moore |
Awards | DBE |
Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE (10 January 1903 – 20 May 1975) was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art (sculpture in particular) in Britain.
Contents |
Life and work
Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,[1] West Yorkshire, the eldest child of Herbert and Gertrude Hepworth. Her father was a civil engineer for the West Riding County Council, who in 1921 became County Surveyor. She attended Wakefield Girls High School, and won a scholarship and studied at the Leeds School of Art from 1920 (where she met Moore). She then won a County scholarship to the Royal College of Art and studied there from 1921 until she was awarded the diploma of the Royal College of Art in 1924.[2] She later studied for a period in Italy.
Hepworth's first marriage was to the sculptor John Skeaping, with whom she had a son, Paul, in 1929.[3] Her second marriage was to the painter Ben Nicholson. They married on 17 November 1938 at Hampstead Register Office. The couple had triplets in 1934, Simon, Rachel and Sarah; Simon also became an artist. The couple divorced in 1951. Her eldest son, Paul, was killed on 13 February 1953 in a plane crash while serving with the Royal Air Force in Thailand. Hepworth created a memorial to him, entitled Madonna and Child,[4] in the church in St Ives.[5]
One of her most prestigious works is Single Form,[6] in memory of her friend and collector of her works Dag Hammarskjöld, at the United Nations building in New York City. It was commissioned in 1961 by the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation following Hammarskjöld's death in a plane crash.
Hepworth was featured in the 1964 documentary film 5 British Sculptors (Work and Talk) by American filmmaker Warren Forma. She was made a dame in 1965,[7] ten years before her death during a fire in her St Ives studio in Cornwall, aged seventy-two.
On 20 December 2011 her 1969 sculpture Two Forms (Divided Circle) was stolen, from its plinth in Dulwich Park, South London, by suspected scrap metal thieves. The piece, which had been in the park since 1970, was insured for £500,000, a spokesman for Southwark Council said.[8]
Galleries holding her work
Hepworth's former studio and home now form the Barbara Hepworth Museum. A new £35 million museum dedicated to Hepworth, the Hepworth Wakefield, opened in Britain in May 2011 at Wakefield in West Yorkshire.[9][10][11]
Her work may also be seen at St Catherine's College, Oxford,[12] the School of Music at Cardiff University,[13] the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, West Yorkshire; Clare College,[14] Churchill College[15] and Murray Edwards College (formerly New Hall),[16] Cambridge; Snape Maltings, Snape, Suffolk; and on view in or attached to the John Lewis department store,[17] part of the John Lewis Partnership, in Oxford Street (see picture); and Kenwood House, both in London. Seaform (Atlantic) may be viewed in a newly created open space on St George's Street Norwich; it has been seen to be used by the Norwich parcour group to hang from horizontally and move through its apertures as part of their own physical urban art form (the sculpture was relocated from the Norwich Castle gardens for fear the precious bronze would be stolen and melted down for scrap).[18] Her 1966 work, Construction (Crucifixion): Homage to Mondrian,[19] can be seen in the grounds of Winchester Cathedral next to The Pilgrims' School; Hieroglyph can be seen at Leeds Art Gallery.[20] The Tate Gallery owns many of her works. In the Netherlands, the Kröller-Müller Museum also owns several of her sculptures. Curved Form (Trevalgan) (1956), which stood in Margaret Gardiner's rear garden in Hampstead, is now at the Pier Art Gallery in Stromness together with 67 other works donated by Gardiner. Trevalgan was Hepworth's first entire bronze form.
Marble portrait heads dating from London, ca. 1927, of Barbara Hepworth by John Skeaping, and of Skeaping by Hepworth, are documented by photograph in the Skeaping Retrospective catalogue,[21] but are both believed to be lost.
Gallery
-
Sphere with Inner Form (1963) at Trewyn Garden, St Ives, Cornwall.
-
Four Square Walk through, 1966, Churchill College, Cambridge.
-
Construction (Crucifixion): Homage to Mondrian, outside Winchester Cathedral
-
Achaean ca. 1963, at St Catherine's College, Oxford
List of selected works
1928 | Doves | Parian marble |
1932–33 | Seated Figure | lignum vitae |
1933 | Two Forms | alabaster and limestone |
1934 | Mother and Child | Cumberland alabaster |
1935 | Three Forms | Seravezza marble |
1936 | Ball Plane and Hole | lignum vitae, mahogany and oak |
1937 | Pierced Hemisphere 1 | white marble |
1940 | Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) | mixed |
1943 | Oval Sculpture | cast material |
1943–44 | Wave | wood, paint and string |
1944 | Landscape Sculpture | wood (cast in bronze, 1961) |
1946 | Pelagos | wood, paint and string |
Tides | wood and paint | |
1947 | Blue and green (arthroplasty) 31 December 1947 | oil and pencil on pressed paperboard |
1949 | Operation: Case for Discussion | oil and pencil on pressed paperboard |
1951 | Group I (Concourse) 4 February 1951 | Serravezza marble |
1953 | Hieroglyph | Ancaster stone |
1954–55 | Two Figures | teak and paint |
1955 | Oval Sculpture (Delos) | scented guarea wood and paint |
1955–56 | Coré | bronze |
1956 | Curved Form (Trevalgan) | bronze (see external link) |
1956 | Orpheus (Maquette), Version II | brass and cotton string |
Stringed Figure (Curlew), Version II | brass and cotton string | |
1958 | Cantate Domino | bronze |
Sea Form (Porthmeor) | bronze | |
1959 | Curved form with inner form – anima | bronze |
1960 | Figure for Landscape | bronze |
Archaeon | bronze | |
1961 | Curved Form (Bryher) | bronze |
1962–63 | Bronze Form (Patmos) | bronze |
1964 | Rock Form (Porthcurno) | bronze |
Sea Form (Atlantic) | bronze | |
Oval Form (Trezion) | bronze | |
1966 | Figure in a Landscape | bronze on wooden base |
Four-Square Walk Through | bronze | |
1968 | Two Figures | bronze and gold |
1969 | Two Forms (Divided Circle) | bronze |
1970 | Family of Man | bronze |
1971 | The Aegean Suite | series of prints |
Summer Dance | painted bronze | |
1972 | Minoan Head | marble on wooden base |
Assembly of Sea Forms | white marble mounted on stainless steel base |
|
1973? | Conversation with Magic Stones | bronze and silver |
See also
References
Notes
- ^ "Barbara Hepworth online bio". Robertsandelson.com. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. http://web.archive.org/web/20110725043928/http://www.robertsandelson.com/bk/barbarahepworth_bio.html. Retrieved 11 December 2011.
- ^ www.cornwall.gov.uk[dead link]
- ^ Hepworth online bio, ibid.[dead link]
- ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/sculptures/1954/madonna-and-child/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Lenin Imports website". Leninimports.com. http://www.leninimports.com/barbara_hepworth.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. 11 June 1964. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/commissions/list/single-form.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 43667. p. 5480. 4 June 1965. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
- ^ "Barbara Hepworth sculpture stolen from Dulwich park, BBC News Website". bbc.co.uk. 20 December 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16266378. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
- ^ An Ambitious $56 Million Barbara Hepworth Museum Grows in Yorkshire ARTINFO.com
- ^ "Hepworth Wakefield website". Hepworthwakefield.com. 27 May 2011. http://www.hepworthwakefield.com/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "New Barbara Hepworth gallery opens in Wakefield". BBC News (BBC). 21 May 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-13483212. Retrieved 6 June 2011.
- ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/sculptures/1959/figure-archaean/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/sculptures/1968/three-obliques-walkin/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/sculptures/1969/two-forms-divided-circle/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Hepworth official website, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/sculptures/1966/foursquare-walk-through/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Murray Edwards College, Cambridge website". Murrayedwards.cam.ac.uk. http://www.murrayedwards.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/applying/subjects/historyofart. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/commissions/list/winged-figure.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Norwich Sculpture Trails". Recording Archive for Public Sculpture in Norfolk and Suffolk. http://www.racns.co.uk/trails/Norwich2Trail.pdf.
- ^ "Hepworth official website, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. http://www.barbarahepworth.org.uk/sculptures/1966/construction-crucifixion/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ "Leeds Art Gallery website". Leedsartgallery.co.uk. http://www.leedsartgallery.co.uk/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
- ^ John Skeaping 1901–80: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Arthur Ackermann and Son, London, 1991, page 7
- Sources
- Penelope Curtis, Barbara Hepworth. Tate Publishing, ISBN 1-85437-225-4.
- Barbara Hepworth, Hepworth, Barbara: A Pictorial Autobiography. Tate Publishing, ISBN 1-85437-149-5.
External links
- Biography[dead link]
- Leslie Sacks Fine Art Biography
- Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden
- Barbara Hepworth in the Tate Collection
- Barbara Hepworth in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
- Collection of Margaret Gardiner at the Pier Art Gallery, Stromness, Orkney including Trevalgan, 1956
- Yorkshire Sculpture Park
- artcornwall.org online journal for art and artists in Cornwall
- Archival material relating to Barbara Hepworth listed at the UK National Archives
Further reading
- 2011: Barbara Hepworth: The Plasters by Sophie Bowness with contributions by Sophie Bowness, David Chipperfield, Frances Guy, Jackie Heuman, Tessa Jackson, Simon Wallis and Gordon Watson (Lund Humphries) ISBN 978-1-84822-066-9