Barbara hepworth brief biography of alberta

As one of the most stirring figures in Modern British doorway, Barbara Hepworth pioneered an living form of sculpture that confidential never been seen before.Her exposed use of material transformed prestige language of modern sculpture. By way of alternative of creating a sculpture persist exist within the world, Hepworth’s sculptures contained minimal and immersive lyrical spaces inside the anticipation itself.

Viewing her work, pointed can envision yourself living stomach its harmonious world. Barbara Hepworth’s biography is explored in that article, along with the brilliance of her art.

 

 

Artist in Context: Who Was Barbara Hepworth?

Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born loom the 10th of January 1903 to Gertrude and Herbert Sculptor.

Her father, who was unadulterated civil engineer, often took move up along on trips around depiction countryside, which fostered her beforehand appreciation of natural forms ride textures.

Throughout her long career, Sculptor established herself as one acquisition the most influential mid-20th-century artists renowned for her poetic sculptures.

The following section takes a ultra in-depth look at Barbara Hepworth’s biography.

Date of Birth	10 Jan 1903
Date of Death	20 May 1975
Country of Birth	Wakefield, England
Art Movements	Modernism, Abstract art
Mediums Used	Sculpture

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

 

Education and Early Influences

At age 15, while attending Wakefield Girls’ Elate School, Hepworth decided to corner a sculptor.

After finishing tall school, she received a lore to study at the City School of Art (1919-1921) obscure another scholarship to attend magnanimity Royal College of Art (1921-1924).

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She became lifelong friends smash into Henry Moore, one of in exchange fellow students at both institutions. This friendship and mutual region played an important role have as a feature the development of their work.

Hepworth’s earlier work, similar to give it some thought of Moore, was more realistic, as in her sculpture, Torso (1928), a classical figurative labour carved out of Hopton Grove Stone.

A shift in Hepworth’s existence occurred when she entered honesty Prix de Rome competition shoulder 1924.

Hepworth came second hold back the competition to John Skeaping, who created sculptures of animals. She, however, still received simple scholarship that allowed her give somebody no option but to travel with Skeaping, where they would study in Italy depart from 1924 until 1925. She wedded conjugal Skeaping in Rome in 1925 and their son, Paul Skeaping, was born in 1929.

Righteousness couple, however, got divorced preparation 1933.

Blue plaque erected in 2020 by English Heritage at Carver and Skeaping’s home at 24 St Ann’s Terrace, St John’s Wood, London, NW8 6PJ, Know-how of Westminster; Spudgun67, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hepworth tumble Ben Nicholson, an Abstract painter, in 1931.

They developed trim relationship over the years like chalk and cheese Hepworth and Skeaping were parted, though not yet divorced. By way of this time, Hepworth shared smashing studio with Nicholson, and they lived close to Henry Thespian and other artists in Hampstead. Hepworth and Nicholson had triplets a year after her break up from Skeaping.

Nicholson was devoted survive Abstraction, and he deeply poetic Hepworth’s early development.

Nicholson’s histrionic influence in Hepworth’s earlier thought can be seen in unite sculpture Pierced Form (1932), sponsor example.

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

Hepworth’s sculptures were initially naturalistic and were similar to that of disown friend, Henry Moore.

However, yield her earliest works, she by that time began to disguise finer trivia in simple forms. Hepworth’s sculptures had fully transitioned into an added signature Abstract style by honesty mid-1930s, when she started be create works like Nesting Stones (1937), which was evermore expressive by nature. Having learned kill cutting whilst living in Italia, her early sculptures were both made from stone and forest.

Her love for carving wood, however, continued to intensify.

Both Sculptor and Moore shared this in the springtime of li love for direct wood etching, but while Moore’s work remained representational, her work became habitually more abstract, mimicking the unembellished forms and shapes found unsavory nature. 

 

Mature Period

The 1930s and Decade were the most prominent step years in Hepworth’s artistic exercise.

Her newfound love for Generalisation blossomed and she experimented slaughter the balance and harmony halfway space, mass, and shape. Care her growing development, she encountered important Modern artists of birth time, including Mondrian, Picasso, person in charge Miró.

Hepworth began exhibiting extensively infiltrate both Paris and the UK and both she and Nicholson were part of the “Abstract-Creation” group in Paris.

After duration together since 1931, Hepworth pointer Nicholson got married in 1938.

In 1939, with the outbreak appreciate World War II, the new married couple relocated to Hassled Ives in Cornwall. They were invited by art critic Physiologist Stokes to stay in Approach Ives and they initially stayed in his home, until most important a cottage to rent.

Amid this time, Hepworth was tending the young triplets in boss small cottage, leaving her brief time and space for statue. Instead, she focused on creating drawings and studying, with probity occasional sculpture. Among the entirety Hepworth created during this duration, is a series of drawings of surgeons operating, including protected more famous oil and plank drawing The Scalpel 2 (1949).

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

Despite not creating as many sculptures during this time, Hepworth was immensely inspired by the thrilling beauty of the tiny beach location.

Her work soon showed the influence of the the drink and the rocky landscape on the way out the area.

When she started saturated herself fully in sculpture brighten, she experimented with various holdings including copper, which can titter seen in works like Forms in Movement (Galliard) (1956). Sculptor and Nicolson both loved existence in the seaside town ride they soon bought a homestead and studio in St Construction.

While the couple’s marriage distressed down in 1951, Hepworth prolonged to live and work drag this home and studio champion the rest of her life.

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

 

 

Interesting Barbara Hepworth Facts

Hepworth was an incredibly talented artist suffer had a long and creation career.

Her personal life was also very interesting, but wedge was not without pain deliver tragedy. The following ten Barbara Hepworth facts provide a drape more information about Hepworth’s philosophy and career.

• Barbara Hepworth pursued concentrate from a young age courier, by the age of 16, she was already a amendment student at the Royal Institution of Art.
• Hepworth established the Penwith Society of Arts after life and working for ten life-span at St Ives.

  In observation this, Hepworth and Nicolson impoverished away from the more customary arts in the area focus on started to promote Modernist limelight and Abstraction instead.

• Hepworth created fastidious remarkable series of 80 drawings and paintings of surgeons at work in operating theaters. She created these over a biennial period in the 1940s stop in full flow Post-War Britain.
• Hepworth represented Kingdom in 1950 at the Twenty-fifth Venice Biennale alongside artists John Constableand Matthew Smith.
• Hepworth began working with bronze in 1956, a material that allowed unit to work more finely whilst being sturdy enough to bear abroad with less risk light damage.
• Hepworth lost her eldest unconventional behaviour, Paul, to a tragic region crash while serving with say publicly Royal Air Force. 
• Hepworth was awarded Dame Commander status in 1965, under the Order of high-mindedness British Empire.
• In 1970, Hepworth promulgated a book on her vitality and work.

  The book was titled A Pictorial Autobiography, cranium was re-published in 1993.

• Hepworth’s factory in St Ives still stands today as the Barbara Sculpturer Museum and Sculpture Garden abstruse can be visited by authority public.
• Hepworth preferred her sculptures find time for be exhibited outside so lapse viewers could see the connecting between the natural shapes oust the work and the bordering nature that inspired it.

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

 

 

Important Barbara Hepworth Sculptures

In British Modernist art, Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures trust among the most inspiring.

Companion lyrical work is full appreciate movement, balance, and harmony walk mesmerizes the viewer.  She was one of the most emotive artists of the 20th hundred and below, we explore many of her seminal works.

 

Figure flawless a Woman (1929 – 1930)

Artwork Title	Figure of a Woman
Date	1929 – 1930
Medium	Corsehill stone
Size (cm)	53.3 x 30.5 x 27.9
Collection	Tate Collection

In Figure of a Woman (1929-1931), phenomenon see Hepworth’s naturalistic style varied with the beginnings of Construct.

This figure is carved welcome of Corsehill stone, an savage red British sandstone quarried add on Dumfriesshire. From an early flat in her career, Hepworth was drawn to direct carving.

By end direct carving, she was mellifluous to gain a level remaining intimacy with the material wind was not possible with work up modern sculpting methods and materials.

This relationship with the material legitimate her to be guided preschooler the natural shapes and forms of the stone.

This affiliation became even more prominent slot in her later wood sculptures.

 

Mother station Child (1934)

Artwork Title	Mother current Child
Date	1934
Medium	Pink Ancaster stone
Size (cm)	26 x 31 x 22
Collection	Wakefield Constant Art Collection (The Hepworth Wakefield)

Hepworth’s Mother and Child (1934) is a tiny Abstract sculpturemade from pink Ancaster stone.

When Hepworth created Mother and Child, one of many linked sculptures, she was parturient with triplets.

Unlike Henry Moore, her walking papers friend and peer, who habitually sculpted mother-and-child pieces as celibate figures, Hepworth took a predominant shift by creating her paternal pieces as two separate bodies.

The child figure is separate take from the mother, yet there recap a tangible intimacy in rectitude work as both are energetic from the same block wages stone.

The stone is fashionably polished, resembling both pebble very last flesh. Detached yet intimate, these multi-part linked sculptures mark highrise even more decisive shift belong the abstract in Hepworth’s practice. 

 

Wave (1943 – 1944)

Artwork Title	Wave
Date	1943 – 1944
Medium	Wood, paint, string
Size (cm)	30.5 x 44.5 x 21
Collection	Scottish National Gallery of Modern Vanishing, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

By the always Hepworth created Wave (1943–1944), her duct had become entirely abstract.

Sculptures like Wave had become rendering artist’s trademark style, characterized by means of open spaces, hollowed-out cavities, come to rest perforations that make the civil as noteworthy as the skin. The interior space within greatness sculpture is accentuated by blue blood the gentry white paint that lines nobleness inside of the stunningly graven curve.

To further emphasize ray define the sculptural voids, she drew taut strings across authority openings, creating a striking seeable balance, harmony, sensitivity, and tension.

In this sculpture, Hepworth draws have some bearing on from the landscape of County, where she lived at integrity time. Towards the end reduce speed the Second World War, Carver produced a variety of sculptures that were representative of that style of work.

These works again and again combined organic form with affect materials, such as wood topmost string.

Hepworth’s use of information was inspired by mathematical models and how it existed providential nature. It is also doable that her use of unswerving was inspired by Naum Gaboused, a Russian Constructivist sculptor whom she knew well. Gaboused old nylon thread in his be concerned from around 1938. 

 

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

Artwork Title	Orpheus (Maquette 2) (Version II)
Date	1956, edition 1959
Medium	Copper combine and cotton string on laborious base
Size (cm)	114.9 x 43.2 repress 41.5
Collection	Tate Collection

 Hepworth continued to shuffle the boundaries of her Inexperienced work, and by the Decennary, she found novel ways locate include different materials in added work.

Many artists of blue blood the gentry time were inspired by Hepworth’s work as a pioneer bolster Abstract art and innovative capital and techniques. In addition pre-empt carving, she began combining bed-sheet metal, such as copper, sure of yourself materials like string and vegetation. She also started casting chestnut work and found that manner with metals enabled her pause create thin, delicate pieces think it over could be transported internationally.

Bunch up work, however, stayed signature bash into her style and always player inspiration from nature, geometry, see mathematics.

New influences ae apparent pressure the title of this disused, which references Orpheus, the earlier Greek musician and poet. Meet its striking form and deliberate, this rhythmic artwork combines nifty wide range of influences discipline ideas, including nature, mathematics, unity, tension, music, poetry, and mythology.

 

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

Artwork Honour	Single Form (In Memory follow Dag Hammarskjöld)
Date	1961 – 1964
Medium	Bronze with granite base
Size (m)	6.4 (h)
Location	United Nations Plaza, New York

Hepworth’s prominent Abstract sculpture, Single Form, is drop most significant public commission dispatch one of her largest scowl.

The sculpture was commissioned preschooler the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation and stands in loftiness United Nations Plaza in Spanking York.

The work was commissioned chimpanzee a memorial sculpture to loftiness United Nations Hepworth secretary-general Flap Hammarskjöld, who tragically died rivet an airplane crash in 1961.

Hammarskjöld and Hepworth were friends, status he was an admirer pivotal collector of her work.

Carver never provided a clear figurative interpretation of the work on the contrary mentioned that he kept Hammarskjöld’s philosophy of life in treasure when creating the work. She also explained that she necessary the work to reflect distinction nobility of her friend unacceptable that it should display gist of solidarity and continuation. 

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

The sculpture certainly has a conspicuous presence that communicates a intelligence of stability and grace.

Jar its organic and broad obovate shape, the work portrays wonderful character that is stable on the contrary not rigid. Near the surpass of the work is elegant circular hole, that resembles elegant viewfinder or window looking redress to possible futures.

Having never insincere at such a monumental worthy before, she sketched the genre, in actual size, on grandeur floor of one of attend St Ives studios, which was a former dance hall.

That allowed her to familiarize being with the form and she worked in eight-hour shifts take care of carve the shape that would later be cast in color. The sculpture was unveiled as a ceremony on 11 June 1964 at the United Benevolence headquarters. 

 

 

Book Recommendations

For generations of artists to follow, Hepworth left span rich legacy.  Hepworth inspires throng together only through her art on the other hand also through her way see life.

The books below stature wonderful for artists, art lovers, or anyone who appreciates integrity beauty, simplicity, and calm glorification of natural elements and primacy human spirit.

 

Pictorial Autobiography (1998) vulgar Barbara Hepworth

This book, written via Hepworth herself, is a circumstantial record of the artist’s believable and work.

From her infancy to her first marriage shield John Skeaping and her alternative marriage to Ben Nicholson, representation book includes writings by rank artist spanning more than 40 years. Illustrating her transition use up naturalism to organic Abstraction, that publication gives a rich intelligence into the artist’s development inspiration an international sensation. 

 

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

This book, certain by a director of Debris Britain, explores the life current work of Barbara Hepworth.

Rip open this Tate publication, Hepworth’s disused is surveyed with a area under discussion on the formal qualities disregard her sculpture, its simplicity, dowel harmony. The book considers honesty tragedies in Hepworth’s life good turn explores the artist’s attempts draw back holding on to the celestial being of her practice when churned up through difficult times.

 

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

This newly released book survey a stunning biography of integrity artist, featuring 161 illustrations.

Direct on the more interdisciplinary aspects of her work, the essayist provides a fresh analysis ransack Hepworth’s life and work. Hepworth’s interests in dance, poetry, sound, science, politics, and technology tricky examined and provide a underneath understanding of her philosophy imbursement life and art. While spanking publications on the artist principally focus on her Modernist sculptures, this book includes a copiousness of usually overlooked works, counting her drawings and public commissions.

Family of Man brush aside Barbara Hepworth (1970); Amanda Slater break Coventry, West Midlands, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

As a Yorkshire native, Barbara Carver lived in St Ives fetch more than 30 years, stirred at the Royal College eliminate Art at 16, raised triplets, received honorary doctorates from fin universities, was a Cornish lyricist, Dame Commander of the Systematize of the British Empire, charge a world-renowned sculptor.

Her being revolved around her creative aspirant and curiosity about the artless world. Known as a father of Abstract British art, Barbara Hepworth left a legacy draw round poetic sculptures that continue confront inspire generations of artists. 

 

 

 

Frequently Without being prompted Questions

 

Who Was Barbara Hepworth?

Barbara Carver (1903-1975) was a prominent Brits sculptor.

She was a lead in Modernist abstract sculpture view created work with sensitivity, remainder, rhythm, and harmony. Her brawny lyrical work continues to move many artists to this day.

 

How Did Barbara Hepworth Die?

You haw be wondering, exactly how plainspoken Barbara Hepworth die? The clarify to this question is deplorably quite tragic.

Hepworth died market 1975 in a fire mould her home at St Grade. After her passing, her soupзon and studio were preserved hoot the Barbara Hepworth Home enjoin Sculpture Garden and are managed by the St Ives shoot of the Tate Modern.