Barbara Hepworth in 1963 working on her ‘Hollow Form with White Interior’ sculpture.
Barbara Hepworth changed the face of sculpture forever with her beautiful, organic, and sensual Modernist sculptures. She achieved significant success during her lifetime, and she is now remembered as one of the most important artists of the 20th century.
Hepworth is best-known for her large abstract sculptures, but she was also a skilled draughtsman; she enjoyed drawing and painting throughout her career, and in the latter stages of her life, she began experimenting with printmaking, too. This was a great success, and her acclaimed prints now account for over 50% of her work sold at auction, usually fetching between £1,000 and £5,000.
Barbara Hepworth’s life is just as interesting as her work, and her personal experiences undoubtedly shaped many of the pieces she produced. Therefore, below is a list of five things you might not have known about Barbara Hepworth
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She Was Fascinated By Greece
Several of Barbara Hepworth’s most well-known prints were inspired by Grecian art, architecture, and landscape, including those that make up The Aegean Suite and some from Twelve Lithographs. It is interesting to note that it was here she travelled to in an attempt to heal and recover from the death of her son, Paul, in a tragic flying accident in 1953. To some extent, Hepworth found comfort in the rugged beauty of the landscape, and she documented her travels in a diary, which later served as a source of inspiration for some of her artwork.
Her Most Expensive Prints Sold For Over £25,000
The Aegean Suite is a set of nine lithographs in colours from 1971, and it reflects Hepworth’s lifelong love of Greece, as well as her interest in the celestial. The series is comprised of prints involving abstracted suns and moons, as well as several geometric forms associated with Ancient Greece, all coloured in the warm hues that evoke the light and beauty of the Mediterranean. The Aegean Suite is very popular in today’s market, and even one or two of the prints from it can fetch high prices; in April 2023, Christie’s sold the complete set of nine lithographs for £25,749, setting a new record for Hepworth.
The Aegean Suite Sold by Christies in 2023
She Was Inspired By Landscapes And Nature
Barbara Hepworth once said: “Whenever I am embraced by land and seascape I draw ideas for new sculptures”, and this translated to her prints as well. The majority of her work draws on the landscape she was surrounded by at the time (such as Opposing Forms and Twelve Lithographs), but also on her wider affinity with the natural world (like Green Man).
The landscape of Cornwall was particularly important to Hepworth’s artistic endeavours; she lived much of her life in St. Ives, where she and Ben Nicholson (her husband for many years) headed an artistic colony, and the beauty of her surroundings constantly found its way into her work. In Hepworth’s own words, “I have gained very great inspiration from Cornish land- and sea-scape, the horizontal line of the sea and the quality of light and colour which reminds me of the Mediterranean light and colour which so excites one’s sense of form… The relationship between figure and landscape is vitally important to me. I cannot feel it in a city.”
And She Loved Exploring Different Forms
There is something extremely sensual in the curved, organic shapes of Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures, which, as she herself said, makes people “want to touch, and that is as it should be.” Though Hepworth’s prints are less tactile than her sculptures, they are made up of similar shapes and lines, and often, Hepworth subsequently created sculptures based on the ideas she explored in her prints and drawings.
Hepworth’s fascination with different forms, “the meaning of the spaces between forms, or the shape of the displacement of forms in space” is one of the reasons her work was so unusual, and why it remains popular today. The print series Opposing Forms highlights this quality; it is a celebration and an exploration of shapes, colour, space, and the harmony and interplay between these elements. It remains among Hepworth’s most popular series, with one edition being sold by Swann Galleries in May 2018 for £23,819.
Barbara Hepworth, Eidos, 1947, stone, synthetic polymer paint.
She Died In Her Studio
Hepworth created much of her best-known work in Trewyn Studio in St. Ives, and she wrote that finding it “was a sort of magic” because it had space, light, and she could work in the open air if she wished. Her drive to work remained steady even in her later years; on her 70th birthday, she announced: “I detest a day of no work, no music, no poetry… It’s all brewing in my mind, all I want is time.”
Unfortunately, although she had a long career, her time was cut short when she was killed by a small accidental fire in her studio on 20 May 1975. In her will, she asked that her studio and its gardens be opened to the public; her wishes were carried out the following year, and the museum remains open today, offering a valuable insight into the remarkable artist’s life and working practice.
