“Barbara Hepworth:
Art & Life”

Tate St. Ives Museum | 2022-2023
Curated by Eleanor Clayton | The Hepworth Wakefield

“A sculpture should be an act of praise, an enduring expression of the divine spirit.” – Barbara Hepworth

In this FSA Inspiration, we feature the British sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975), particularly the Tate St. Ives exhibition: “Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life” (2023). This show considers five decades of her prints, drawings, paintings, designs, and sculptures – both figurative and abstract – inspired by the natural surroundings of the sea near her studio in St. Ives, Cornwall, England. Echoing the neolithic history of the Cornish landscape, Hepworth’s minimalist forms connect the land to its prehistoric past. Remarks Eleanor Clayton: “Hepworth embraced the ancient histories of Cornwall and their spiritual significance, describing the landscape near Zennor as ‘a place to visit where we can feel at one with God and the universe.’”

Identifying both as an Anglo-Catholic and as a Christian Scientist, Hepworth’s spirituality deeply characterizes her forms and shapes. Hepworth believed that sculpture had “an inner spiritual life” which she visually conveys through her carved and hollowed out spaces. From the Tate Exhibition Guide: “She continually returned to three important shapes in her work: ‘standing forms,’ ‘two forms’ and ‘closed forms.’ These iconic shapes are represented through works in wood, stone and bronze. Hepworth associated these forms with physical and emotional states, such as a figure poised at the top of a hill or a mother holding a child […] while strings in her sculptures convey ‘the tension she felt between herself and the sea, the wind or the hills’ […] Some {sculptures} combine elements of her Christian Science faith which states that the ‘divine mind’ – the spiritual entity of which all existence is a part – ‘is in perpetual motion.’ Its symbol is the sphere […] ‘Spirit’ is understood to be the meaning and reality of being, where all issues contrary to the goodness of Spirit – God – are considered to originate in the flesh – ‘matter’ – understood as materialism where humanity is separated from God.”

Barbara Hepworth, “Figure (Archaean) in the garden of Trewyn Studio,” 1961.

Barbara Hepworth, Interior View - Plaster Workshop

Val Wilmer, "Barbara Hepworth in the Palais studio with unfinished wood carving Hollow Form with White Interior," 1963.

Barbara Hepworth, "Disc with Strings (Moon)," 1969.

Barbara Hepworth, "Curved Form (Oracle)," 1960. Guarea wood, part painted.

Barbara Hepworth, “Mother and Child,” 1933. White marble.

Barbara Hepworth, "Pelagos," 1946.

Barbara Hepworth, "Curved Stone with Yellow," 1946. Painted stone.

Barbara Hepworth, "Curved Form (Trevalgan)," 1956.

View

Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden | Tate St. Ives

Barbara Hepworth – An Introduction | Tate