Hepworth, Barbara (1903-1975), was a leading English sculptor. Her work does not fall into any distinct style. Some of her sculptures are based on human figures. She reduced them to a few basic forms, alone or connected to another figure or to its surroundings. Other sculptures are more abstract, made of smoothly carved wood or marble or bronze casts. Hepworth created these works in angular, circular, or spiral geometric shapes. They are almost always pierced with one or more holes to emphasize the tensions in the hollows.
Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on Jan. 10, 1903, in Wakefield in West Yorkshire, a part of England with rolling landscapes that she said influenced her work. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Hepworth moved to the village of St. Ives in Cornwall with her husband, painter Ben Nicholson. Cornwall’s rugged coastline and wild landscape also influenced her work. Hepworth died in a fire in her St. Ives studio on May 20, 1975. Her sculpture Single Form (1963) stands in the United Nations Plaza in New York City.
