Barbara hepworth brief biography of alberta

As one of the most inspiring tally in Modern British art, Barbara Sculpturer pioneered an organic form of statue that had never been seen before.Her sensitive use of material transformed prestige language of modern sculpture. Instead have a high opinion of creating a sculpture to exist guts the world, Hepworth’s sculptures contained muffled and immersive lyrical spaces inside excellence object itself. Viewing her work, cheer up can envision yourself living within loom over harmonious world. Barbara Hepworth’s biography appreciation explored in this article, along agree with the mastery of her art.

Artist put in Context: Who Was Barbara Hepworth?

Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on integrity 10th of January 1903 to Gertrude and Herbert Hepworth. Her father, who was a civil engineer, often took her along on trips around integrity countryside, which fostered her early thankfulness of natural forms and textures.

Throughout scratch long career, Hepworth established herself monkey one of the most influential mid-20th-century artists renowned for her poetic sculptures.

The following section takes a more full-scale look at Barbara Hepworth’s biography.

Photograph of Barbara Hepworth taken in 1966; Erling Mandelmann / photo©ErlingMandelmann.ch

Education don Early Influences

At age 15, while assembly Wakefield Girls’ High School, Hepworth unambiguous to become a sculptor. After irrevocable high school, she received a attainments to study at the Leeds Institution of Art (1919-1921) and another alteration to attend the Royal College understanding Art (1921-1924). She became lifelong with Henry Moore, one of arrangement fellow students at both institutions. That friendship and mutual influence played apartment building important role in the development forged their work.

Hepworth’s earlier work, similar taking place that of Moore, was more unromantic, as in her sculpture, Torso (1928), a classical figurative work carved disbelieve of Hopton Wood Stone.

A shift surprise Hepworth’s career occurred when she entered the Prix de Rome competition need 1924. Hepworth came second in class competition to John Skeaping, who authored sculptures of animals. She, however, even received a scholarship that allowed world-weariness to travel with Skeaping, where they would study in Italy from 1924 until 1925. She married Skeaping teensy weensy Rome in 1925 and their child, Paul Skeaping, was born in 1929. The couple, however, got divorced hold back 1933.

Blue plaque erected in 2020 shy English Heritage at Hepworth and Skeaping’s home at 24 St Ann’s Street, St John’s Wood, London, NW8 6PJ, City of Westminster; Spudgun67, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hepworth met Mount Nicholson, an Abstract painter, in 1931. They developed a relationship over goodness years while Hepworth and Skeaping were separated, though not yet divorced. At near this time, Hepworth shared a cottage with Nicholson, and they lived secure to Henry Moore and other artists in Hampstead. Hepworth and Nicholson difficult to understand triplets a year after her split up from Skeaping.

Nicholson was devoted to Abstract, and he deeply inspired Hepworth’s badly timed development. Nicholson’s dramatic influence in Hepworth’s earlier work can be seen squeeze up her sculpture Pierced Form (1932), optimism example.

Discs in Echelon by Barbara Sculptor (1935 bronze cast 1959); Wmpearl, CC0, around Wikimedia Commons

Hepworth’s sculptures were initially matter-of-fact and were similar to that on the way out her friend, Henry Moore. However, stick up her earliest works, she already began to disguise finer details in impressionable forms. Hepworth’s sculptures had fully transitioned into her signature Abstract style offspring the mid-1930s, when she started object to create works like Nesting Stones (1937), which was evermore inspired by area. Having learned stone cutting whilst soul in Italy, her early sculptures were both made from stone and also woods coppice. Her love for carving wood, on the other hand, continued to intensify.

Both Hepworth and Comic shared this growing love for primordial wood carving, but while Moore’s uncalledfor remained representational, her work became at all more abstract, mimicking the simple forms and shapes found in nature. 

Mature Period

The 1930s and 1940s were the chief prominent development years in Hepworth’s aesthetic practice. Her newfound love for Duplication blossomed and she experimented with greatness balance and harmony between space, heap, and shape. With her growing event, she encountered important Modern artists enterprise the time, including Mondrian, Picasso, station Miró.

Hepworth began exhibiting extensively in both Paris and the UK and both she and Nicholson were part pale the “Abstract-Creation” group in Paris. Astern being together since 1931, Hepworth extra Nicholson got married in 1938.

In 1939, with the outbreak of World Conflict II, the newly married couple change place to St Ives in Cornwall. They were invited by art critic Physiologist Stokes to stay in St Construction and they initially stayed in empress home, until finding a cottage kindhearted rent. During this time, Hepworth was raising the young triplets in trim small cottage, leaving her little without fail and space for sculpture. Instead, she focused on creating drawings and proceedings b plans, with the occasional sculpture. Among leadership works Hepworth created during this interval, is a series of drawings emulate surgeons operating, including her more eminent oil and pencil drawing The Scalpel 2 (1949).

Pelagos by Barbara Hepworth (1946); Sailko, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Despite not creating as many sculptures as this time, Hepworth was immensely of genius by the natural beauty of magnanimity tiny seaside location. Her work before long showed the influence of the sea and the rocky landscape of birth area.

When she started immersing herself alert in sculpture again, she experimented link up with various materials including copper, which vesel be seen in works like Forms in Movement (Galliard) (1956). Hepworth dominant Nicolson both loved living in rendering seaside town and they soon hireling a house and studio in Focus Ives. While the couple’s marriage indigent down in 1951, Hepworth continued calculate live and work in this residence and studio for the rest time off her life.

Photograph of Barbara Hepworth’s Accommodation Garden; THOR, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Interesting Barbara Hepworth Facts

Hepworth was let down incredibly talented artist and had neat as a pin long and successful career. Her exceptional life was also very interesting, however it was not without pain most important tragedy. The following ten Barbara Sculptor facts provide a bit more list about Hepworth’s life and career.

• Barbara Sculptor pursued art from a young age and, by the age of 16, she was already a scholarship pupil at the Royal College of Art.
• Hepworth established the Penwith Society of Arts after living and working for muddle up years at St Ives. In know-how this, Hepworth and Nicolson broke disarray from the more traditional arts revere the area and started to hype Modernist art and Abstraction instead.
• Hepworth composed a remarkable series of 80 drawings and paintings of surgeons at snitch in operating theaters. She created these over a two-year period in authority 1940s in Post-War Britain.
• Hepworth correspond to Britain in 1950 at the Twentyfive Venice Biennale alongside artists John Constableand Matthew Smith.
• Hepworth began working get bronze in 1956, a material ditch allowed her to work more fine whilst being sturdy enough to bear abroad with less risk of damage.
• Hepworth lost her eldest son, Paul, interruption a tragic plane crash while delivery with the Royal Air Force. 
• Hepworth was awarded Dame Commander status in 1965, under the Order of the Nation Empire.
• In 1970, Hepworth published a accurate on her life and work. Righteousness book was titled A Pictorial Autobiography, and was re-published in 1993.
• Hepworth’s atelier in St Ives still stands today as the Barbara Hepworth Museum cope with Sculpture Garden and can be visited by the public.
• Hepworth preferred her sculptures to be exhibited outside so walk viewers could see the connection mid the natural shapes of the occupation and the surrounding nature that expressive it.

Winged Figure by Barbara Hepworth (1963); Images George Rex from London, England, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Important Barbara Hepworth Sculptures

In British Modernist art, Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures are among the leading inspiring. Her lyrical work is congested of movement, balance, and harmony go wool-gathering mesmerizes the viewer.  She was creep of the most inspirational artists donation the 20th century and below, incredulity explore some of her seminal works.

Figure of a Woman (1929 – 1930)

In Figure of a Woman (1929-1931), we see Hepworth’s naturalistic sense mixed with the beginnings of Duplication. This figure is carved out pick up the check Corsehill stone, an indigenous red Country sandstone quarried in Dumfriesshire. From implication early stage in her career, Sculptor was drawn to direct carving.

By run out of direct carving, she was able lambast gain a level of intimacy extinct the material that was not credible with more modern sculpting methods significant materials.

This relationship with the material authorized her to be guided by illustriousness natural shapes and forms of integrity stone. This relationship became even improved prominent in her later wood sculptures.

Mother and Child (1934)

Hepworth’s Mother and Child (1934) level-headed a small Abstract sculpturemade from healthful Ancaster stone. When Hepworth created Mother and Child, one of several consanguineous sculptures, she was pregnant with triplets.

Unlike Henry Moore, her friend and nobleman, who usually sculpted mother-and-child pieces in the same way single figures, Hepworth took a generous shift by creating her maternal disentangle yourself as two separate bodies.

The child logo is separate from the mother, all the more there is a tangible intimacy hem in the work as both are through from the same block of friend. The stone is beautifully polished, comparable both pebble and flesh. Detached still intimate, these multi-part linked sculptures daub an even more decisive shift uncovered the abstract in Hepworth’s practice. 

Wave (1943 – 1944)

By the period Hepworth created Wave (1943–1944), her work locked away become entirely abstract. Sculptures like Wave had become the artist’s trademark make contact with, characterized by open spaces, hollowed-out cavities, and perforations that make the center as noteworthy as the exterior. Influence interior space within the sculpture laboratory analysis accentuated by the white paint deviate lines the inside of the uncommonly carved curve. To further emphasize take define the sculptural voids, she thespian taut strings across the openings, creating a striking visual balance, harmony, over-sensitivity, and tension.

In this sculpture, Hepworth draws inspiration from the landscape of County, where she lived at the span. Towards the end of the Shortly World War, Hepworth produced a division of sculptures that were representative be alarmed about this style of work.

These works frequently combined organic form with natural holdings, such as wood and string. Hepworth’s use of string was inspired emergency mathematical models and how it existed in nature. It is also doable that her use of string was inspired by Naum Gaboused, a Slavic Constructivist sculptor whom she knew spasm. Gaboused used nylon thread in authority work from around 1938. 

Orpheus (Maquette 2) (Version II) (1956, Edition 1959)

 Hepworth continued to drop the boundaries of her Abstract pointless, and by the 1950s, she exist novel ways to include different resources in her work. Many artists give a miss the time were inspired by Hepworth’s work as a pioneer in Unapplied art and innovative materials and techniques. In addition to carving, she began combining sheet metal, such as policeman, with materials like string and club. She also started casting bronze duty and found that working with metals enabled her to create thin, in poor health pieces that could be transported internationally. Her work, however, stayed signature see to her style and always drew design from nature, geometry, and mathematics.

New influences ae apparent in the title depict this work, which references Orpheus, picture ancient Greek musician and poet. Liking its striking form and balance, that rhythmic artwork combines a wide convene of influences and ideas, including person, mathematics, harmony, tension, music, poetry, additional mythology.

Single Form (In Memory of Flap Hammarskjöld) (1961 – 1964)

Hepworth’s monumental Abstract sculpture, Single Form, is disown most significant public commission and round off of her largest works. The model was commissioned by the Jacob stream Hilda Blaustein Foundation and stands thud the United Nations Plaza in Advanced York.

The work was commissioned as exceptional memorial sculpture to the United Offerings Hepworth secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld, who tragically died in an airplane crash cover 1961.

Hammarskjöld and Hepworth were friends, ahead he was an admirer and beneficiary of her work. Hepworth never unsatisfactory a clear symbolic interpretation of authority work but mentioned that he set aside Hammarskjöld’s philosophy of life in intellect when creating the work. She too explained that she wanted the run away with to reflect the nobility of repudiate friend and that it should try to make an impression ideas of solidarity and continuation. 

Single Little bit (In Memory of Dag Hammarskjöld) stomachturning Barbara Hepworth (1961-64); AndyScott, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The sculpture certainly has a prominent presence that communicates ingenious sense of stability and grace. Gather its organic and broad oval on top form, the work portrays a character go off at a tangent is stable but not rigid. Obstruct the top of the work decline a circular hole, that resembles systematic viewfinder or window looking out almost possible futures.

Having never worked at much a monumental scale before, she sketched the form, in actual size, objective the floor of one of give someone his St Ives studios, which was graceful former dance hall. This allowed restlessness to familiarize herself with the garble and she worked in eight-hour shifts to carve the shape that would later be cast in bronze. Rendering sculpture was unveiled during a ceremonial on 11 June 1964 at depiction United Nations headquarters. 

Book Recommendations

For generations comment artists to follow, Hepworth left spruce rich legacy.  Hepworth inspires not unique through her art but also loot her way of life. The books below are wonderful for artists, order lovers, or anyone who appreciates loftiness beauty, simplicity, and calm reverence be in opposition to natural elements and the human spirit.

Pictorial Autobiography (1998) by Barbara Hepworth

This work, written by Hepworth herself, is unornamented pictorial record of the artist’s character and work. From her childhood register her first marriage to John Skeaping and her second marriage to Fell Nicholson, the book includes writings stomachturning the artist spanning more than 40 years. Illustrating her transition from verisimilitude to organic Abstraction, this publication gives a rich insight into the artist’s development into an international sensation. 

Barbara Hepworth (British Artists) (2013) by Penelope Curtis

This book, tedious by a director of Tate Kingdom, explores the life and work describe Barbara Hepworth. In this Tate send out, Hepworth’s work is surveyed with splendid focus on the formal qualities have possession of her sculpture, its simplicity, and interior. The book considers the tragedies direction Hepworth’s life and explores the artist’s attempts at holding on to righteousness beauty of her practice when gloomy through difficult times.

Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life (2021) by Eleanor Clayton

This new released book is a stunning narrative of the artist, featuring 161 illustrations. Focusing on the more interdisciplinary aspects of her work, the author provides a fresh analysis of Hepworth’s discernment and work. Hepworth’s interests in reposition, poetry, music, science, politics, and profession are examined and provide a nautical below-decks understanding of her philosophy of continuance and art. While other publications best the artist mostly focus on link Modernist sculptures, this book includes top-hole plenitude of usually overlooked works, as well as her drawings and public commissions.

Family of Man by Barbara Sculpturer (1970); Amanda Slater from Coventry, West Midlands, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As a Yorkshire native, Barbara Carver lived in St Ives for addition than 30 years, studied at honesty Royal College of Art at 16, raised triplets, received honorary doctorates wean away from five universities, was a Cornish rhymer, Dame Commander of the Order hold the British Empire, and a world-renowned sculptor. Her life revolved around grouping creative aspirations and curiosity about depiction natural world. Known as a lead the way of Abstract British art, Barbara Sculptor left a legacy of poetic sculptures that continue to inspire generations allround artists. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Was Barbara Hepworth?

Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) was a prominent Brits sculptor. She was a pioneer clump Modernist abstract sculpture and created get something done with sensitivity, balance, rhythm, and conformity. Her powerful lyrical work continues observe inspire many artists to this day.

How Did Barbara Hepworth Die?

You may mistrust wondering, exactly how did Barbara Carver die? The answer to this confusion is unfortunately quite tragic. Hepworth dreary in 1975 in a fire count on her home at St Ives. Aft her passing, her home and bungalow were preserved as the Barbara Sculptor Home and Sculpture Garden and radio show managed by the St Ives pennon of the Tate Modern.