Responsive / The Hepworth Wakefield / Research

'“One of the finest contemporary art museums in Europe.” The IndependentWith over 1,600 square metres of light-filled gallery spaces, The Hepworth Wakefield is the largest purpose-built exhibition space outside London.

The gallery brings together work from Wakefield’s art collection, exhibitions by contemporary artists and rarely seen works by Barbara Hepworth.

With a café, shop, learning studios, unique conference venue, and exciting events programme, the gallery is a place to explore art, architecture and your imagination.'

Barbara Hepworth

'Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) was born in Wakefield on 10 January 1903. Her father, Herbert Hepworth, would become County Surveyor and an Alderman.'

'After visiting Rome and Siena with Skeaping, they were married in Florence on 13 May 1925 and moved to Rome, where both began carving stone. In November 1926, they returned to London. Links forged through the British School at Rome with the sculptor Richard Bedford (a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum), ensured that the collector George Eumorfopoulos visited their studio show in 1927 and bought two works by Hepworth.'

'With Bedford and Moore, Hepworth and Skeaping became leading figures in the ‘new movement’ associated with direct carving. Successful joint exhibitions in 1928 (Beaux Arts Gallery, London and Alex. Reid and Lefevre, Glasgow) and 1930 (Tooth’s) consisted of animal and figure sculptures in stone and wood.'

'Her first major solo exhibition in 1943 (Temple Newsam, Leeds) was followed by a monograph by William Gibson (Barbara Hepworth: Sculptress, 1946). Hepworth became prominent amongst St Ives artists, forming a focus in 1949 for the establishment of the Penwith Society of Artists with Nicholson, Peter Lanyon and others, and helping to attract international attention to the group’s exhibitions.'

'...in Wakefield (1951) and London (Whitechapel 1954) - and Read’s monograph (1952) confirmed her post-war reputation.'

'Hepworth also represented a link with pre-war ideals in a climate of social and physical reconstruction, exemplified by her two sculptures for the South Bank site of the Festival of Britain (1951).':

'I do not want to make a stone horse that is trying to and cannot smell the air. How lovely is the horse’s sensitive nose, the dogs moving ears and deep eyes; but to me these are not stone forms and the love of them and the emotion can only be expressed in more abstract terms. I do not want to make a machine that cannot fulfill its essential purpose; but to make exactly the right relation of masses, a living thing in stone, to express my awareness and thought of these things.'

'I have been deeply interested during the last ten years in the use of colour with form. I have applied oil colour – white, grey, and blues of different degrees of tone… …I have been very influenced by the natural colour and luminosity in stones and woods and the change in colour as light travels over the surface contours. When I pierced the material tight through a great change seemed to take place in the concavities from which direct light was excluded. From this experience my use of colour developed.'