Barbara Hepworth was one of the premier sculptors of the twentieth century. Like her British contemporary Henry Moore, Hepworth used direct carving and then large-format bronzes to realise a highly personal sculptural vision. Unlike many male sculptors of her generation, Hepworth addressed themes of nature, the elements and the planets, water and light; drawing on a deep sense of spirituality, derived from a belief in the tenets of Christian Science, Hepworth looked beyond visual reality and extracted a substance which she then conjured using allusive sculptural forms. Her international reputation was secured by the monumental public commission for the United Nations, Single Form (1961-64), which remains in situ to this day. After giving birth to triplets in October 1934, Barbara Hepworth began making sculpture purged of all representational allusions. Reflecting about that period of her work in 1952, she wrote, ‘When I started carving again in November 1934, my work seemed to have changed direction although the only fresh influence had been the arrival of the children.’ The new mode she arrived at was one of geometrical abstraction. At the beginning of her career in 1927, Hepworth had depicted faces and figures in a primitivist style, progressing in 1932 and 1933 to the use of abstracted organic shapes suggestive of the human figure, before producing in 1934, following the birth of her triplets, a sequence of geometrical works which included Two Forms and another closely related work of the same title (fig. 1). It was a seminal moment in Hepworth’s development as one of Britain’s leading modernist artists, signalling a departure from contemporary artists like Henry Moore who continued to work in an anthropomorphic vein. The sculpture Hepworth made in late 1934 shows an awareness of contemporary Parisian abstraction and equals the most advanced creations of her French contemporaries. The art of Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti and Jean Hélion from this date is closely related to Two Forms (cf. figs. 2 and 3). Hepworth herself grouped the period 1934-39 under the taxonomy of ‘constructive forms and poetic structure’. From 1932, her work showed a growing desire to address advanced European art and it was then that she started to title works using the language of ‘forms’. This fitted with a trend encompassing many French artists too (some of Hélion’s contemporary titles include ‘Abstract Composition’ and ‘Equilibrium’). Works of distorted anthropomorphism by Hepworth like Pierced Form (1932, destroyed) further suggest her ambition to understand and master new abstract vocabularies. Not until the geometrical works of 1934, of which Two Forms is one of the earliest, however, did she realise her aspiration to join the advanced frontiers of ‘pure’ modernism. This gradual, resounding arrival at abstraction was so strident that it was not until the 1940s and ‘50s that her titles again began to suggest representational content, with works like ‘Figure’ and ‘Head’. Hepworth’s aspiration to achieve a style of formal purity was inseparable from the sculptural technique which she used to realise it. Under the influence of her first husband John Skeaping, in the 1920s she adopted the technique of direct stone carving. Along with Henry Moore, she rejuvenated this method which was originated by Constantin Brancusi in 1906 and adopted shortly afterwards in England by Eric Gill and Jacob Epstein. Previous generations of sculptors had preferred to model their work in clay, using studio assistants to reproduce the design on a larger scale in bronze or stone. By contrast, direct carving encouraged artists to handle materials themselves and to respond to the block, its colours and graining. Hepworth herself articulated the ethos of direct carving in a statement for Unit 1 published in 1934. Unit 1 was a loose collective of modernist artists formed in 1933 and one of the cornerstones of progressive art in Britain; Hepworth’s combination of direct carving and geometrical abstraction made her one of the most committed and original members of the group. Describing the type of work she aspired to make, she wrote: It must be stone shape and no other shape. Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion; a perfect relationship between the mind and the colour, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels. It must be so essentially sculpture that it can exist in no other way […]. This approach is strongly evident in Two Forms and Hepworth’s other abstract geometrical carvings from 1934 and 1935. The semi-mystical emphasis on ‘the hand which feels’ was central to the direct carving methodology, the implicit interest in an unseen mood or idea bears a relation to Surrealism, and the influence of the Christian Science movement on Hepworth only strengthened her conviction that human labour should be intermingled with the organic stone block. For their artistic effect, Hepworth’s geometrical abstract works rely upon the graining and contrasting surface qualities of stone. In Two Forms, this emphasis upon the quality of materials is underpinned by an austere approach to shape and volume: the work consists simply of an egg-like sphere and an irregular rectangle placed on a flattened rectangular plinth. These qualities are clearly registered in historical black and white photographs of the work, including that taken by Hepworth herself shortly after Two Forms was completed (fig. 4) and a photograph used in the 1982 Kettle’s Yard Gallery exhibition catalogue (fig. 5). The components of Two Forms are made of similar types of alabaster, though the two pieces have their own veining, colour and luminosity. The result is a subtle interplay of delicate surface effects. Hepworth appreciated alabaster for its suppleness, rich surfaces and partial transparency which imbues certain varieties with a warm glow. At this time, Hepworth also used white alabaster, with a smooth and even consistency; Cumberland alabaster, of a darker grey hue and mottled veining; and Northumberland alabaster, brown-grey in colour and with a uniform graining similar to granite. Two Forms was made in Hepworth’s Hampstead studio at The Mall, Parkhill Road (fig. 6), which she occupied between 1928 and 1939. The work was first owned by an unidentified man named Bennett, and subsequently passed to Hepworth’s father, Herbert Hepworth (1880-1958), who was a civil engineer in the West Riding of Yorkshire. After his death the work returned to Hepworth and, since her death in 1975, it has been owned by her descendants.