WAKEFIELD.- To mark The Hepworth Wakefield’s 10th anniversary, the Yorkshire-based gallery opened the most expansive exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s work in the UK since the artist’s death in 1975.

The exhibition presents an in-depth view of the Wakefield-born artist’s life, interests, work and legacy. It displays some of Hepworth’s most celebrated sculptures including the modern abstract carving that launched her career in the 1920s and 1930s, her iconic strung sculptures of the 1940s and 1950s, and large scale bronze and carved sculptures from later in her career. Key loans from national public collections are being shown alongside works from private collections that have not been on public display since the 1970s, as well as rarely seen drawings, paintings and fabric designs. It reveals how Hepworth’s wide sphere of interests comprising music, dance, science, space exploration, politics and religion, as well as events in her personal life, influenced her work.

Contemporary artists Tacita Dean and Veronica Ryan have been commissioned to create new works which are being presented within the exhibition. Each artist explores themes and ideas that interested Hepworth and that continue to resonate with their own work. Artworks by Bridget Riley from the 1960s are also being presented in dialogue with Hepworth’s work from the same period.

To coincide with the exhibition, The Hepworth Wakefield’s curator Eleanor Clayton has written a major new biography on the artist, published by Thames & Hudson. Eleanor Clayton said: ‘Barbara Hepworth is one of the most important artists of the 20th century, with a unique artistic vision that demands to be looked at in depth. This exhibition will shine a light on Hepworth's wide-ranging interests and how they infused her art practice. Deeply spiritual and passionately engaged with political, social and technological debates in the 20th century, Hepworth was obsessed with how the physical encounter with sculpture could impact the viewer and alter their perception of the world.’

Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield, said: 'Lockdown continues to be an ongoing challenge for us all, so I’m delighted we’ll be celebrating, post-lockdown, our 10th anniversary with an in-depth exploration of the art and life of Barbara Hepworth, Wakefield’s most famous daughter. With this major exhibition and new book, we'll continue to build on the legacy and influence of a key pioneer of modern sculpture. Hepworth is a daily inspiration for us at the gallery and we look forward to sharing some of her greatest work with a wide new audience.’

THE EXHIBITION IN DETAIL




The exhibition opens with an introduction to Barbara Hepworth’s work, showing the three sculptural forms she returned to repeatedly throughout her career using a variety of different materials. A detailed look at Hepworth’s childhood in Yorkshire through archive material and photographs includes some of the artist’s earliest- known paintings, carvings and life drawings as she began to explore movement and the human form. A proponent of direct carving, Hepworth combined an acute sensitivity to the organic materials of wood and stone with the development of a radical new abstract language of form.

Hepworth’s determination to break free from accepted tradition was enhanced by travelling to Paris in 1932 where she visited the studios of many of the leading European avant-garde artists including Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi and Pablo Picasso. A large section looks at Hepworth’s development of abstraction in the 1930s including Three Forms (1935) created shortly after she gave birth to triplets, an event she felt invigorated her work towards a bolder language of geometric form. One of the few examples in existence of Hepworth’s first coloured stringed sculptures in plaster, made during World War Two, is being shown alongside the many drawings she created during this period when sculptural materials were scarce. She described these drawings as 'my sculptures born in the disguise of two dimensions.’

The exhibition reveals the artist’s creative process, drawing on new research from the recently established Hepworth Research Network (HRN), in collaboration with the Universities of York and Huddersfield, into the ways material factors shaped Hepworth’s sculptures and how they related to her broader conceptual and aesthetic concerns. This includes how starting bronze casting in the 1950s enabled Hepworth to create new forms and how, later in life, she experimented with new materials such as lead crystal and aluminium. On display is The Hepworth Wakefield’s unique collection of 44 surviving prototypes in plaster, aluminium and wood, many of which show the marks of Hepworth’s own hand and tools. These are being shown with a specially commissioned intervention by artist Veronica Ryan, the first artist to undertake a residency in Hepworth's old studio in St Ives, where the prototypes once stood.

Hepworth's broader interests – such as music, dance, theatre, politics, Greek mythology, and science – influenced her sculptures throughout her life. In the immediate post-war period she became fascinated with the interaction between figures - both in groups in her studio and observed around her, and also in a series of 'Hospital drawings', capturing surgeons at work in the early days of the National Health Service. These paintings and drawings capture her belief in the importance of unifying mental and physical existence - the 'proper coordination between hand and spirit in our daily life', to create a productive and positive society.

In 1951 Hepworth met composer Priaulx Rainier, and subsequently made several works inspired by the parallels between musical form and abstract sculpture. This coincided with her first theatrical design, for the 1951 production of Electra at The Old Vic. Archive photographs are being displayed together with Apollo (1951), a metal sculpture that formed part of the stage set, along with costume and set designs for the 1955 opera by Michael Tippett, A Midsummer Marriage, staged in 1955 at the Royal Opera House. This section of the exhibition also explores Hepworth’s passion for dance, and how she captured movement with gestural paintings and sculptures such as Forms in Movement (Galliard) (1956) and Curved Form (Pavan) (1956).

During the 1960s, Hepworth was a key cultural figure. She staged major exhibitions, presented work in experimental ways, made large-scale sculptures and explored colour in the patination of bronzes or painted surfaces of her carving. She played an active role in both local and international politics, campaigned for nuclear disarmament and supported pacifist causes. Her political values were encapsulated in the monumental Single Form, commissioned for the United Nations in 1964, of which she declared, 'The United Nations is our conscience. If it succeeds it is our success. If it fails it is our failure.’ Rare footage of Hepworth’s speaking at the unveiling of this work as been included in the exhibition.

A group of works have been brought together to reveal the influence of the decade of space exploration on Hepworth, from Disc with Strings (Moon) (1969), made the year Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, to Four Hemispheres, inspired by the Telstar satellite. Hepworth noted at the end of the decade, 'Man’s discovery of flight has radically altered the shape of our sculpture, just as it has altered our thinking.'

The final section of the exhibition looks at Hepworth's last years, featuring her experiments with new materials and techniques, which incorporate bold colours and luminescent surfaces, while consistently seeking to use abstract form to express universal human experiences.