Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE ​​( born January 10, 1903 in Wakefield, England, † May 20 in St Ives in Cornwall, England, 1975 ) was an important British sculptor.

Life

Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was the eldest child of Herbert and Gertrude Hepworth. She attended the Girl's High School in Wakefield and then studied (1920 /21) at the Leeds School of Arts, where she met Henry Moore. This was followed by sculptor studies at the Royal College of Art in London and Italy. 1924 Hepworth received a scholarship for a one-year art journey that led her to Florence and Rome. In 1925, she married in Siena the sculptor John Skeaping. They returned in late 1927 back to London. 1929 her son Paul was born.

No art dealer at this time wanted to take the risk to issue the early works of two unknown artists. Therefore, the two end of 1927 held their first exhibition in her studio, by which they came into contact with important for them personalities and art collectors. A year later, followed by another exhibition at the Beaux -Arts Galery in London with John Skeaping and the painter William EC Morgan. 1931 Hepworth met Ben Nicholson, with whom she became a member of the Seven and Five Society, a group of seven painters and five sculptors who wanted to bring a new impetus to the art. ( The group disbanded in 1934 ). In the same year Hepworth separated from Skeaping to live with Nicholson and work. The two took a trip to France in 1933, where they met Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Important exhibitions during this time were in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Belfast. In October 1934, the triplets, Simon, Rachel and Sarah were born.

The following years were marked by exhibitions, and close collaboration with other artists such as Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash and Henry Moore. A small group of interested art connoisseurs and critics took a liking to the work of the young artist to Hepworth and Moore, who swam against the mainstream and more and more attention attracted to himself.

In 1936 the exhibition Abstract & Concrete was opened in Oxford. In her work of Mondrian, Kandinsky, Arp, Giacometti, Miró, Calder, Moholy -Nagy, Nicholson, Hepworth, Moore and others were shown. In the same year bought the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first sculpture by Hepworth.

In April 1938, she presented an exhibition of abstract art at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, from. In September, we moved the friendly Piet Mondrian from Paris to London, and Nicholson and Hepworth were there to help him to find accommodation for him. She was very close to her own studio on Park Hill Road. After Nicholson had been divorced from his wife Winifred, she married him in November of the year. A year later they moved their residence in St Ives in Cornwall, where the couple at a center of abstract art, the so-called Penwith Society of Artists, formed. Many more exhibitions followed. Among other things, the first retrospective in Leeds 1943. 1949 Hepworth bought the Trewyn studio in St Ives, where she lived until her death. The divorce of Nicholson in October 1951.

Barbara Hepworth was a participant in the Venice Biennale in 1950, the documenta 1 (1955) and Documenta II in Kassel in 1959. From it comes the sculpture Single Form, which was created in the sixties and is reminiscent of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. For its size bronze castings Hepworth bought the Palais de Danse, a former cinema and dance studio, which was opposite the Trewyn Studio. In 1965, she was knighted. Ten years later, she died 72 years old in a fire at her studio. This and the adjacent sculpture garden form the Barbara Hepworth Museum since 1980. It is under the management of the Tate St Ives.

Work

The work of Hans Arp and Constantin Brancusi had great influence on Barbara Hepworth work, and their work can be highly abstract parallels to the work of her friend Henry Moore seen. An example of this period is their 104 cm high figure Hollow form with White Interior from Guarea - wood, which was sold in June 2011 at the London auction house Hazlitt Holland- Hibbert.

• Works (selection)

Construction ( Crucifixion ): Homage to Mondrian, in Winchester Cathedral

Family of Man, 1970. Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Sculpture in front of the town hall of St Ives

Sculptures in the Hepworth Museum, St Ives

Further works are exhibited in the museum since May 2011 The Hepworth Wakefield, whose construction was designed by the English architect David Chipperfield in her birthplace Wakefield. In addition, work their British contemporaries were taken, among others, by Ben Nicholson, Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, Patrick Heron, Walter Sickert and international artists such as Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti.