British artist barbara hepworth biography

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They struck up a friendship and a friendly rivalry that would inform the practice of both artists throughout the mature part of their careers. As a girl, Hepworth accompanies him on the car journeys he makes all over the West Riding of Yorkshire in the course of his work.

1909–20

Attends Wakefield Girls' High School.

1971

The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth 1960–69, edited by Alan Bowness, is published. Unit One embraced both, Nash himself created works which managed to be both surreal and abstract. This enabled her to carry out large-scale sculptures, such as Dag Hammerskjold Memorial Single Form (1963, United Nations, New York).

In 1943 a retrospective of her work was shown in Leeds (Temple Newsam Gallery), and this was followed by a monograph by the author William Gibson (Barbara Hepworth: Sculptress, 1946). Separation from Skeaping (they are divorced in March 1933).

Hepworth died tragically in a fire at her studio in St Ives in 1975. July–August, short holiday with Nicholson in Varengeville, near Dieppe, at the invitation of Alexander Calder; they see Braque and Miró there.

Unable to make major work until 1943.

1940

In November, bombs damage the Mall studio, destroying works left there.

1942

Exhibits in New Movements in Art at the London Museum, March–May. Hepworth has a studio there and can carve in the garden. Begins to work with the Morris Singer foundry in London.

1960

Meridian is unveiled at State House, Holborn, London, in March (4.6 m high; now at PepsiCo Headquarters, Purchase, New York State).

After her death, her studio and garden were turned into the Barbara Hepworth Museum. November–December, shared exhibition with Nicholson at Arthur Tooth & Sons' Galleries, London (catalogue foreword on Hepworth by Herbert Read). Hepworth's frequent use of cross-hatching strings, rods or even fishing line in her harder sculptural forms became such a well-known feature in her work that the satirical magazine Punch published a humorous cartoon in 1970 depicting the artist making her sculpture by hand-stitching.

In 1949 she bought a house and studio at St Ives, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Late Period

Though she had often felt in Moore's shadow in terms of fame and recognition, Hepworth's public visibility increased when her work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 1950 and as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951. She exhibited extensively with various abstractionist groups in this period, both in the UK and in Paris, and contributed to anti-fascist exhibitions and catalogs.

The work makes manifest the fundamental underlying principle of carving; that form and volume are created by taking away material, not adding it, distinguishing it from almost every other art form. She was preoccupied by sculpture's integration into the landscape, and she achieves this here by allowing the work's setting to be seen through the circular openings.