Hepworth: Sensuous Curves
- Elle Bee
- Jul 23
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 3
"Full sculptural expression is spatial - it is the three-dimensional realization of an idea, either by mass or by space construction. The materials for sculpture are unlimited in their variety of quality, tenseness and aliveness. But for the imaginative idea to be fully and freely projected into stone, wood or any plastic substance, a complete sensibility to material - an understanding of its inherent quality and character - is required. There must be a perfect unity between the idea, the substance and the dimension: this unity gives scale... Vitality is not a physical, organic attribute of sculpture - it is a spiritual inner life." - Barbara Hepworth.
The Hepworth in Colour Exhibition at The Courtauld, London
12 June – 6 September 2026
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
(text by The Courtauld unless otherwise indicated)
Views of Porthmeor Beach. (extreme left and right photos from cafe of Tate, St Ives. Middle photo includes view over front entrance of Tate St Ives.
"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." - Barbara Hepworth
Single Form belongs to a group of seven totem-like carvings created by Hepworth in 1937–8. The series interrogated one of her most important motifs, the vertical standing form, across different materials including marble and a selection of soft- and hardwoods.
Expanded Colour
In 1953, a documentary made with the new process of colour film, titled Figures in a Landscape, offered dream-like images of Hepworth's sculpture sited in the landscape. The colours of their painted interiors blended with those of the sky and sea of Cornwall, where she chose to live for the rest of her life. For Hepworth, it was her colours more than her forms that expressed the sensations, light and atmosphere of the Cornish coast. As she recalled, 'The colour in the concavities plunged me into the depths of water, caves, or shallows deeper than the carved concavities themselves!
From about 1943, pale blue became Hepworth's favourite hue, applied to the hollowed-out interiors of her exquisite wood carvings, while sunny yellows and a vibrant blue emanate from curved surfaces of a small group of stone sculptures made in the immediate post-war years. The many drawings and paintings of the period present a combination of bright and pastel hues offset by black lines and solid white forms.
Hepworth used colour poetically as a way to express her feeling of being in the landscape. This continued into the 1950s and 1960s, when she added strong blacks, whites and terracotta hues, as well as the coppery greens of her patinated bronzes (Text by The Courtauld).
Top Row - L to R: Curved Stone with Yellow, 1946. Stone & paint | repeat | Tides II, 1946. Plane wood & paint.
Bottom Row - L to R: Oval Form, 1956. Oil & pencil on board | Eidos, 1947. Portland stone & paint | Curved Form with Green, 1943. Pencil & gouache on paper.
Eidos (bottom row, middle photo): The title Eidos, which means 'shape' or 'form' in Greek, might refer to the sculpture or to the Cornish landscape which Hepworth said inspired it. In line with the principles of constructive colour, a bright cadmium yellow accentuates the depth of carving on the front and the shallowness of the painted section on the back. Its central form is nested womb-like within a series of enfolding curves, connecting it to the maternal imagery present in Hepworth's work in the late 1940s.
When Eidos's owner asked the sculptor if the yellow, which was flaking, should be repainted, she insisted that these 'natural processes' of ageing were part of the work's character.
(National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased with the assistance of the Samuel E. Wills Bequest to commemorate the retirement of Dr E. Westbrook, Director of Arts for Victoria, 1981.)
L to R: Top - Intersection, 1946. Pencil and gouache on board | Sculpture with Colour (Eos), 1946. Hopton wood stone and paint | Turning Form (Atlantic) 1961. Oil & pencil on board.
Eos (middle photo): Ovals were a favourite shape of Hepworth's. Adding colour was one way to introduce variety, here accentuating the contrast between the smoothly polished stone, precisely carved ridges and vibrantly painted surfaces. Walking around the sculpture, each side offers a new and unanticipated colour experience. Hepworth said she used colour to evoke the sensation of light falling on a specific surface at certain times of day.
Since Eos was the Greek goddess of the dawn, the vivid blue and very pale whiteish greys could refer to the sky at daybreak.
This sculpture and Eidos (see above) are reunited - placed next to each other at The Courtauld’s Hepworth in Colour exhibition - for the first time in the UK since the sculptor's first major retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1954.
Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, St Ives, Cornwall
(owned and managed by Tate since 1980)
The Barbara Hepworth Museum was opened in 1976 by Hepworth's family, following the wishes expressed in her will. The Museum has been owned and run by Tate since 1980. It contains the largest group of Hepworth's works, permanently on display at Trewyn Studio and garden where she lived and worked from 1949 until her death in 1975.
St Ives
Barbara Hepworth lived for exactly half of her life in St Ives. When she arrived just before the outbreak of war in 1939, it was as a rather unwilling visitor. However she found it impossible to leave, and when she acquired Trewyn Studio ten years later, Hepworth had an ideal environment in which to work. As she wrote to a friend the day after she bought Trewyn at a public auction: "it will be a joy to carve in such a perfect place, both serene & secluded – the courtyard & garden protected by tall trees & roof tops so that I can work out of doors most of the year." (From Barbara Hepworth.org)
The Sculptor's Landscape
"A sculptor's landscape embraces all things that grow and live and are articulate in principle: the shape of the buds already formed in autumn, the thrust and fury of spring growth, the adjustment of trees and rocks and human beings to the fierceness of winter - all these belong to the sculptor's world, as well as the supreme perception of man, woman and child of this expanding universe. It is within our bodies to feel and to be, and in making a sculpture we do, in fact, make a talisman that enables us to enter our architecture and look at our painting as fully posed human beings." - Barbara Hepworth.
Top row: - L to R: Hollow Form with Inner form 1968 | View of St Ia's Parish Church tower | foreground - Corymb 1969 & background Sphere with Inner Form, 1963.
Bottom row - L to R: Forms in Movement (Pavan), 1956-9, cast 1967 | River Form 1965, cast 1973 | Four Square (Walk Through), 1966.
Trewyn Studio
"Finding Trewyn Studio was a sort of magic. For ten years I had passed by with my shopping bags not knowing what lay behind the twenty foot wall... Here was a studio, a yard and garden, where I could work in open air and space". - Barbara Hepworth.
Trewyn Studio, St Ives
First: Oval with Two Forms, 1971. Marble and slate on slate base.
Swipe for Second: Stringed Figure (Curlew / Version II). 1956, edition 1959. Brass with string on wooden base.
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