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拍品專文
‘I am one of the few people in the world who know how to speak through marble’
- Dame Barbara Hepworth, in a letter to Norman Reid, 1964.
In Solitary Form, 1971, Barbara Hepworth presents the viewer with a monumental carving which exemplifies the geometric purity of the sculpture of her later work. Returning from making bronzes to carve stone by hand in later life, the pieces she created in the 1970s are amongst the most expressive of her output. In Solitary Form, Hepworth manipulates the surface of the marble, juxtaposing flat and curved planes, solids and indentations, to express a lyrically striking aesthetic. The grey and pink veining of the marble is used to an extraordinary effect to emphasise the intricacy and unpredictability of the natural stone surface.
Hepworth had discovered direct carving in Rome in 1924 while a student of the master-carver, Giovanni Ardini, when she had won the West Riding of Yorkshire scholarship to work in Italy. Marble became her preferred stone as she later explained to J.P. Hodin in 1964, ‘I love marble especially because of its radiance in the light, its hardness, precision, and response to the sun ... Marble is indeed a noble material, it has a most exceptional sensitivity and delicacy as well as a tremendous strength’ (the artist, quoted in J.P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth and the Mediterranean Spirit, in Marmo Rivista Internazionale d’Arte e Architettura, no. 3, December 1964, pp. 59, 62). While always striving to develop an intimate relationship with this medium, direct carving using her hands and simple tools allowed Hepworth to make a deep connection with the stone.
‘I do not like using mechanical devices or automatic tools. Even if the work was done ten times more easily I should miss the physical pleasure of direct contact with every part of the form from the beginning to the end’.
- Dame Barbara Hepworth, interviewed in ‘Approach to Sculpture’, in Studio Magazine, London, October 1946, p. 34.
Hepworth’s later work marked a return to the purity of abstraction that she had embraced in her early career in Hampstead, where she lived in an artistic enclave with the avant-garde innovators, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian, and Herbert Read. The purity of the white marble that she favoured here connecting her aesthetic to the painted white reliefs that Nicholson, her husband, created during the 1930s. When the couple moved to Cornwall at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, she became drawn to the dramatic coastline of the Penwith peninsula and its remarkable quality of light, as well as to the many ancient standing stone sites that she found there. These monoliths were particularly important in developing her view of the single standing form which she had held since her Yorkshire childhood when she had considered that the rugged and unspoilt landscape had formed her artistic vision. The fusion of man with landscape was most effectively seen in her concept of the single standing form – ‘the translation of my feeling towards the human being standing in landscape’. She recalled ‘It was during this time that I gradually discovered the remarkable pagan landscape which lies between St Ives, Penzance, and Land’s End; a landscape which still has a very deep effect on me, developing all my ideas about the relationship of the human figure in the landscape’ (the artist, exhibition catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, A Retrospective, 1994, p. 81).
Hepworth’s later work strives to explore the relationship between two or more large forms in the creation of multipart sculpture that could be viewed together or individually when moved apart, such as in the monumental nine piece work The Family of Man (1970). However, the single standing form was one of her most important artistic expressions throughout her work, and in Solitary Form, Hepworth realises an exceptional monumentality and startling purity.
- Dame Barbara Hepworth, in a letter to Norman Reid, 1964.
In Solitary Form, 1971, Barbara Hepworth presents the viewer with a monumental carving which exemplifies the geometric purity of the sculpture of her later work. Returning from making bronzes to carve stone by hand in later life, the pieces she created in the 1970s are amongst the most expressive of her output. In Solitary Form, Hepworth manipulates the surface of the marble, juxtaposing flat and curved planes, solids and indentations, to express a lyrically striking aesthetic. The grey and pink veining of the marble is used to an extraordinary effect to emphasise the intricacy and unpredictability of the natural stone surface.
Hepworth had discovered direct carving in Rome in 1924 while a student of the master-carver, Giovanni Ardini, when she had won the West Riding of Yorkshire scholarship to work in Italy. Marble became her preferred stone as she later explained to J.P. Hodin in 1964, ‘I love marble especially because of its radiance in the light, its hardness, precision, and response to the sun ... Marble is indeed a noble material, it has a most exceptional sensitivity and delicacy as well as a tremendous strength’ (the artist, quoted in J.P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth and the Mediterranean Spirit, in Marmo Rivista Internazionale d’Arte e Architettura, no. 3, December 1964, pp. 59, 62). While always striving to develop an intimate relationship with this medium, direct carving using her hands and simple tools allowed Hepworth to make a deep connection with the stone.
‘I do not like using mechanical devices or automatic tools. Even if the work was done ten times more easily I should miss the physical pleasure of direct contact with every part of the form from the beginning to the end’.
- Dame Barbara Hepworth, interviewed in ‘Approach to Sculpture’, in Studio Magazine, London, October 1946, p. 34.
Hepworth’s later work marked a return to the purity of abstraction that she had embraced in her early career in Hampstead, where she lived in an artistic enclave with the avant-garde innovators, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian, and Herbert Read. The purity of the white marble that she favoured here connecting her aesthetic to the painted white reliefs that Nicholson, her husband, created during the 1930s. When the couple moved to Cornwall at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, she became drawn to the dramatic coastline of the Penwith peninsula and its remarkable quality of light, as well as to the many ancient standing stone sites that she found there. These monoliths were particularly important in developing her view of the single standing form which she had held since her Yorkshire childhood when she had considered that the rugged and unspoilt landscape had formed her artistic vision. The fusion of man with landscape was most effectively seen in her concept of the single standing form – ‘the translation of my feeling towards the human being standing in landscape’. She recalled ‘It was during this time that I gradually discovered the remarkable pagan landscape which lies between St Ives, Penzance, and Land’s End; a landscape which still has a very deep effect on me, developing all my ideas about the relationship of the human figure in the landscape’ (the artist, exhibition catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, A Retrospective, 1994, p. 81).
Hepworth’s later work strives to explore the relationship between two or more large forms in the creation of multipart sculpture that could be viewed together or individually when moved apart, such as in the monumental nine piece work The Family of Man (1970). However, the single standing form was one of her most important artistic expressions throughout her work, and in Solitary Form, Hepworth realises an exceptional monumentality and startling purity.