Barbara Hepworth Quotes about Art

Barbara Hepworth was a famous 20th century British sculptor and printmaker. She is best known for her modernist abstract sculptures, natural stone forms, and for opening up her sculptures to show the insides of the work. Famous Barbara Hepworth artworks include “Mother and Child”, “Two Forms (Divided Circle)”, “Landscape Sculpture”, “Pierced Hemisphere”, “Oval Form (Trezion)”, “Two Figures (Menhirs)”, “Contrapuntal Forms”, “Two Forms with White (Greek)”, “Disks in Echelon” and “Winged Figure”.

Mini biography: Born Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth on the 10th of January, 1903 in Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain. Her mother was Gertrude and her father Herbert Hepworth was a civil engineer. Hepworth married John Skeaping in 1925 and they had one child together: Paul Skeaping. They were divorced in 1933. She married her second husband painter Ben Nicholson in 1938 and they had three children together: Sarah and Rachel, Simon. They divorced in 1951. The artist died in a fire at her studio on the 20th of May, 1975 in St Ives, Cornwall, England at the age of 72. Barbara Hepworth is buried at the Longstone Cemetery in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, England in the UK.

List of Famous Barbara Hepworth Art Quotes

The sculptor carves because he must. He needs the concrete form of stone and wood for the expression of his idea and experience, and when the idea forms the material is found at once. Barbara Hepworth

Sculpture, to me, is primitive, religious, passionate, and magical. Barbara Hepworth

There is an inside and an outside to every form. When they are in special accord, as for instance a nut in its shell or a child in the womb, or in the structure of shells or crystals, or when one senses the architecture of bones in the human figure, then I am most drawn to the effect of light. Every shadow cast by the sun from an ever-varying angle reveals the harmony of the inside to outside. Light gives full play to our tactile perceptions through the experience of our eyes, and the vitality of forms is revealed by the interplay between space and volume. Barbara Hepworth

Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion; a perfect relationship between the mind and the colour, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels. It must be so essentially sculpture that it can exist in no other way, something completely the right size but which has growth, something still and yet having movement, so very quiet and yet with a real vitality. Barbara Hepworth

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. Barbara Hepworth

I have always preferred direct carving to modelling because I like the resistance of the hard material and feel happier working that way. Carving is more adapted to the expression of the accumulative idea of experience and clay to the visual attitude. An idea for carving must be clearly formed before starting and sustained during the long process of working; also, there are all the beauties of several hundreds of different stones and woods, and the idea must be in harmony with the qualities of each one carved; that harmony comes with the discovery of the most direct way of carving each material according to its nature. Barbara Hepworth

I have always been interested in oval or ovoid shapes. The first carvings were simple realistic oval forms of the human head or of a bird. Gradually my interest grew in more abstract values – the weight, poise and curvature of the ovoid as a basic form. The carving and piercing of such a form seems to open up an infinite variety of continuous curves in the third dimension, changing in accordance with the contours of the original ovoid and with the degree of penetration of the material. Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth Sculpture

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Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: Ben Nicholson, Jean Arp, Henry Moore and other Famous British Sculptors.