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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for this work. Dr Sophie Bowness is preparing the revised catalogue raisonné of Hepworth’s sculpture.
Imbued with serene elegance, Single Form’s upright stance is a classic example of one of the most enduring motifs that fascinated Barbara Hepworth throughout her career. The solitary, slender, standing form was among the most important of Hepworth’s oeuvre and became an archetypal image, as the reclining figure would for Henry Moore. Hepworth described the importance of this preoccupation: ‘The forms that have had special meaning for me since childhood have been the standing form (which is the translation of my feelings towards the human being standing in the landscape)’ (quoted in Barbara Hepworth: An Exhibition of Sculpture from 1952-1962, exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, n.p.).
Single Form embodies a harmony and rhythm within itself; delicate and serene, rich and hieratic. The form recalls the ancient stone menhirs which stand in the landscape around St Ives, where Hepworth kept her studio. Her heightened awareness of the figure in relation to the landscape corresponds with Hepworth’s departure from London and her move to Cornwall with her husband Ben Nicholson in August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Cornwall’s sculptural landscape captivated the artist with its magnificent cliffs, headlands and caves, its monolithic stones and abandoned tin mines, which poetically punctuated the skyline. To her, in ‘the pure light’ of the Cornish coast, ‘the solitary human figure, standing on a hill or cliff, sand or rock, becomes a strong column, a thrust out of the land’ (S. Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth, Writings and Conversations, London, 2015, pp. 116-117).
Originally carved in lignum vitae – a particularly durable hardwood – in 1937 (Courtauld Gallery, London), the present work was later cast in bronze in 1962, in an edition of seven. Hepworth had returned to working with bronze in 1956, after decades devoted to direct carving wood and stone, and Single Form is notable for sharing a sculptural language with her carvings while exploiting the specific material qualities of bronze. Here, Hepworth explores the gentle curves of her chosen piece of lignum vitae, shaping the side into a smooth, subtly convex planar face. The bronze form is polished to a bright gold shine, which Hepworth frequently used in the 1960s, imbuing the organic form with a jewel-like majestic quality.
The present sculpture is sold with a bronze plinth designed by Tino Zervudachi.
Imbued with serene elegance, Single Form’s upright stance is a classic example of one of the most enduring motifs that fascinated Barbara Hepworth throughout her career. The solitary, slender, standing form was among the most important of Hepworth’s oeuvre and became an archetypal image, as the reclining figure would for Henry Moore. Hepworth described the importance of this preoccupation: ‘The forms that have had special meaning for me since childhood have been the standing form (which is the translation of my feelings towards the human being standing in the landscape)’ (quoted in Barbara Hepworth: An Exhibition of Sculpture from 1952-1962, exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, n.p.).
Single Form embodies a harmony and rhythm within itself; delicate and serene, rich and hieratic. The form recalls the ancient stone menhirs which stand in the landscape around St Ives, where Hepworth kept her studio. Her heightened awareness of the figure in relation to the landscape corresponds with Hepworth’s departure from London and her move to Cornwall with her husband Ben Nicholson in August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Cornwall’s sculptural landscape captivated the artist with its magnificent cliffs, headlands and caves, its monolithic stones and abandoned tin mines, which poetically punctuated the skyline. To her, in ‘the pure light’ of the Cornish coast, ‘the solitary human figure, standing on a hill or cliff, sand or rock, becomes a strong column, a thrust out of the land’ (S. Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth, Writings and Conversations, London, 2015, pp. 116-117).
Originally carved in lignum vitae – a particularly durable hardwood – in 1937 (Courtauld Gallery, London), the present work was later cast in bronze in 1962, in an edition of seven. Hepworth had returned to working with bronze in 1956, after decades devoted to direct carving wood and stone, and Single Form is notable for sharing a sculptural language with her carvings while exploiting the specific material qualities of bronze. Here, Hepworth explores the gentle curves of her chosen piece of lignum vitae, shaping the side into a smooth, subtly convex planar face. The bronze form is polished to a bright gold shine, which Hepworth frequently used in the 1960s, imbuing the organic form with a jewel-like majestic quality.
The present sculpture is sold with a bronze plinth designed by Tino Zervudachi.