Artists & Works

STYLE: 70s SCULPTURE,
CARBORUNDUM PROGRAM

Known as one of the world's foremost sculptors, Barbara Hepworth was also a pioneer in the field of abstract sculpture. Passionately interested in art from childhood, she studied at the Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Committed to exploring abstraction early in her career, she had her first solo exhibition in 1928, and had fully developed her mature style of organic abstraction soon after. By the fifties, Hepworth was representing England in the Venice Biennale and had had her first full-scale retrospective exhibition. Hepworth was made a dame of the British Empire and her work can be found in major collections throughout the world.

Hepworth's most well-known work is distinctive for its sensual, rounded shapes, partially the result of her employment of a direct carving strategy, where she would carve into the marble or alabaster herself, rather than making a mold to be replicated by a professional finisher. She also polished her own sculptures. The shapes are often pierced in various ways, adding to their sensual appeal. This sculpture was first executed in marble, one of Hepworth's most commonly-used materials, but it was recast in crystal to be offered as a commemorative by the Carborundum Corporation.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

Pamela Young, Maclean's, 5/29/95
"Curator [Alan G., at the Art Gallery of Ontario] Wilkinson describes [Henry] Moore as 'undoubtedly the most important formative influence' on Hepworth, but adds that by the start of the Hampstead years they were working side by side as equals. 'They were like Braque and Picasso in the early days of cubism. They were constantly exchanging ideas and influencing each other's work.' Yet even in this period, the sculptures of Moore and Hepworth remained very different. She was at heart a classicist who strove to create serenely beautiful objects, while he found inspiration in the unsettlingly direct expressiveness of pre-Colombian art. Hepworth's stone carving Figure of a Woman (1929-1930), one of the strongest early works in the current retrospective, resembles Moore's work in its thickset monumentality, but has a repose that sets it apart from the pent-up vitality of his carvings."

Donald Kuspit, Artforum, Summer, 2001
"It may seem strange to say so, but Hepworth, while clearly a formalist, indeed, a textbook modernist, is taking on classical sculpture. For instance, the small but monumental-feeling Sheltered Form, 1972, with bold black slate forming a kind of geometric throne for the eccentric, weirdly organic, luminous white marble shape, displays the perfectionism, insularity, and balance of classical figures, even as it conveys the peculiar estrangement of the modern mentality. And as in classical sculpture, each part carries in itself the tension of the whole. Hepworth has said that her work is 'primitive, religious, passionate, and magical,' but it is also poised, meticulously detailed, and carefully crafted. Her sculptures may be expressions of the collective unconscious, as she implies, but they are also self-consciously unique. Thus the mystery of Hepworh's sculptures lies not only in their smooth surfaces and shapes--she wanted them to look as though they had been "eroded by sea and rain or polished by the wind"--but in the sense of total control that informs them. When she is through with a stone, it looks as if it has never been anything but civilized."