Who was Barbara Hepworth?

All my early memories are of forms and shapes and textures. Moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the form. Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of fullness and concavities, through hollows and over peaks – feeling, touching, seeing, through mind and hand and eye. This sensation has never left me. I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour.

These are the words of the sculptor, Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) as she recalled her childhood in the area that would eventually become the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle (thanks to her work and fame).

During Hepworth’s lifetime, she was one of a few female artists who achieved international acclaim and recognition. The Hepworth Wakefield museum is one of the few in the world named in honour of a female artist. Find out more about this pioneering sculptor in the video.

If you’d like to learn more about Hepworth’s life and work, download Episode 1 of the Paul Mellon Centre’s podcast series Sculpting Lives. In each 45-minute episode, art historians discuss a woman sculptor and explore her artworks, networks, connections and relationships.

Reference

Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial Autobiography (Bath: Moonraker Press, 1971).