Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth DBEwas an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. She was one of the few female artists to achieve international prominence. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the Second World War...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth10 January 1903
block sheep sculpture
I love my blocks of marble, always piling up in the yard like a flock of sheep.
succeed failing united-nations
The United Nations is our conscience. If it succeeds it is our success. If it fails it is our failure.
art body creation
Body experience... is the centre of creation.
yield details tiny
One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.
form hollow thrust
I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour
thinking artist community
The naturalness of life... the sense of community is, I think, a very important factor in an artist's life.
form impulse clear
I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create.
order space purpose
I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.
thinking hands left-hand
My left hand is my thinking hand (image), my right hand my doing hand (sequence).
midnight found
I found one had to do some work every day, even at midnight, because either you're professional or you're not.
past emotional creative
[My works are] an imitation of my own past and present and of my own creative vitality as I experience them in one particular instant of my emotional and imaginative life. . .
men primitive-man drawing
Sculpture is, in the twentieth century, a wide field of experience, with many facets of symbol and material and individual calligraphy. But in all these varied and exciting extensions of our experience we always come back tot the fact that we are human beings of such and such a size, biologically the same as primitive man, and that it is through drawing and observing, or observing and drawing, that we equate our bodies with our landscape.
country inspiration moving
I have gained very great inspiration from the Cornish land- and seascape, 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; and first and last there is the human figure which in the country becomes a free and moving part of a greater whole. This relationship between figure and landscape is vitally important to me. I cannot feel it in a city.
integrity ideas intuition
Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality - it resists and makes demands...