Barbara Hepworth

and Henry Moore

Hepworth was an English artist and sculpture. Her work exemplifies Modernism and modern sculpture.

Hepworth trained at the Leeds School and Art and the Royal College of Art, where she met fellow sculptor Henry Moore. Hepworth and Moore became two of the most influential twentieth century sculptures, leading figures in the modern sculpture movement.

Hepworth’s Oval Sculpture Number 2 , 1958, plaster on wood

Hepworth was an artist of extraordinary stature whose importance is still significant. Over 50 years, from 1925 to her death in 1975, she made more than 600 works of sculpture remarkable in range and emotional force. Her private life was complicated, at times traumatic: two marriages and four children. Hepworth is said to have had an unwavering self-belief. She demonstrated so tangibly her understanding that "the dictates of work are as compelling for a woman as for a man".

Hepworth’s sculptures focus on shape, the play between positive and negative space and movement.

Hepworth with the plaster of Garden Sculpture in the garden at Trewyn, June 1960.

Monolyth-Empyrean 1953 in Gardens of Kenwood House, London

Hepworth is a sculptor of great tactility. Her works ask to be stroked, grasped, leant up against and walked through. Her perceptions of Yorkshire were a lasting influence. "All my early memories are of forms and shapes and textures," she wrote in her autobiography. "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's and concavities, through hollows and over peaks - feeling, touching, through mind and hand and eye." Hepworth in the studio with

unfinished wood carving Hollow Form with White Interior.

Hepworth Gallery in her hometown of Wakefield, New Yorkshire

Henry Spencer Moore was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. He and Hepworth attended school together.

Henry Moore sculpture in the Botanical Gardens in Bronx, NY

Many of Moore’s sculptures are said to be abstracted human forms, which, like Hepworth’s work, focus on shape, space and movement.

In both artists’ work, the negative space is just as significant as the positive space.

HEPWORTH “FIGURE FOR LANDSCAPE” 1960

MOORE “TWO LARGE FORMS” 1966, CLOSE UP