Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life

Originally staged at The Hepworth Wakefield near the artist’s birthplace, Tate St Ives has collaborated with the gallery to reimagine the exhibition for the Cornish context in which Hepworth lived and worked. It will emphasise how the area’s rugged landscape and close-knit artistic community became important sources of inspiration.

Visitors to the exhibition will follow Hepworth’s early artistic journey from her initial studies at Leeds School of Art in 1920–1 to her travels across Europe, and her subsequent life in London in the 1930s, where she started a family.

The exhibition will then trace the development of Hepworth’s work during her early years in St Ives – an artistic community she quickly embraced after permanently relocating to the Cornish seaside town at the outbreak of the Second World War. 

The show will explore the artist’s forays into stage design and her interest in the movement of the body, as well as her adoption of bronze to make work in response to the landscape. Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life will culminate with a section on the artist’s interest in space and spirituality, with particular reference to the inspiration she took from her visit to Goonhilly Earth Station on the Lizard, Cornwall. 

More info: HERE

Picture: Dame Barbara Hepworth, Stringed Figure (Curlew), Version II 1956, edition 1959 (detail) © Bowness. Photo by Kirstin Prisk