Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth (1903 - 1975)

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) was one of the most original sculptors of the twentieth century. Along with a small circle of friends working in Hampstead in the thirties, she was an early pioneer of the modernist movement in Britain. Following the adoption of direct carving by Constantin Brâncuși in 1906 and by Eric Gill in Britain around 1909, Hepworth and her friend Henry Moore uniquely combined carving and a modernist vocabulary of abstract forms. 

Hepworth was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and after an extended period living in London she moved with her family to St Ives when war threatened in August 1939. She chose to remain in Cornwall for the rest of her life and formed a profound attachment to the landscape of West Penwith. Much of her work addresses the motif of a figure standing in the open countryside. After a brief marriage to the sculptor John Skeaping, she met Ben Nicholson in 1931 and they immediately fell in love. Their triplets were born in October 1934, and they separated in the early fifties. 

After the Second World War, Hepworth achieved widespread international recognition especially in North America and Japan. In 1955–56, following a retrospective exhibition of her work at Whitechapel Art Gallery, a selection of her carvings and drawings toured across the United States and Canada. Later in life she forged a close connection with the Tate Gallery, making a large gift of her work to the gallery in 1964. Her home studio of Trewyn in St Ives, a remarkably extensive property in such a compact town, was opened as a museum after her death, and it has been operated as part of Tate since 1980.