BARBARA HEPWORTH (1903-1975)
BARBARA HEPWORTH (1903-1975)
BARBARA HEPWORTH (1903-1975)
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BARBARA HEPWORTH (1903-1975)
8 More
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTOR
BARBARA HEPWORTH (1903-1975)

Four Figures Waiting

Details
BARBARA HEPWORTH (1903-1975)
Four Figures Waiting
signed, dated and numbered 'Barbara Hepworth 1⁄9 1968' (on the top of the base); stamped with foundry mark 'Morris Singer FOUNDERS LONDON' (on the side of the base)
polished bronze
Height: 23 ½ in. (59.6 cm.)
Conceived and cast in 1968
Provenance
Marlborough-Godard, Montreal (on consignment from the artist).
Acquired from the above by the late owner, June 1974.
Literature
A. Bowness, The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-1969, London, 1971, p. 46, no. 461 (another cast illustrated, pl. 12).
Further Details
Dr. Sophie Bowness will include this work in her forthcoming revised Hepworth catalogue raisonné under the catalogue number BH 461.

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Lot Essay

Through her exploration of abstraction, Barbara Hepworth developed her own unique visual language that brought her critical acclaim beginning as early as the 1930s. After dedicating the first two decades of her career to “direct carving” in stone and wood, she turned to bronze in the late 1950s and quickly discovered that the versatility and strength of this medium considerably broadened both the range and scale of her work.
Conceived in 1968 during Hepworth’s most prolific and arguably most successful decade, Four Figures Waiting belongs to a series of abstract sculptures composed of pierced vertical forms on a shared base. The artist’s command of the material and acute understanding of spatial complexity is exemplified in the smooth, jewel-like, polished surface of the four vertical forms and her use of the space between them. By placing the forms within the set and defined space of a geometric base, Hepworth generates palpable tension between them, activating the negative space around the figures and conjuring a sense of engagement among them. The present work exemplifies Hepworth's plastic exploration of how the language of advanced abstraction could portray complex themes of human relationships.

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