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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.
Endowed with a purity of form and a sense of physical intimacy, Three Forms embodies Hepworth's exploration of form. Conceived in 1932 and carved from grey alabaster, the original (BH 66, Tate, London) is a seminal work of determining importance of the relationship between solid and void, and was one of the earliest examples of such an arrangement in Hepworth’s oeuvre. The present piece (BH 521) was later cast in bronze in 1971 by Morris Singer Foundry.
Three carefully arranged rounded forms stand with intricate tension, personifying the artist’s preoccupation with exploring relationships that arise when multiple forms are juxtaposed. The shapes and locations of the forms have been seen as holding some general proportional sequence, however, it is likely that such relationships were worked out by eye (see M. Gale and C. Stephens, Barbara Hepworth Works in the Tate Gallery Collection and the Barbara Hepworth Museum St Ives, London, 1999, pp. 49-50).
In the mid-1930s, Hampstead became the centre for the abstract avant-garde movement, and Hepworth, alongside key figures of the cultural scene such as Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian, Herbert Read and her then husband Ben Nicholson, established her life and practice there. It was at this time that Hepworth first explored the motif of three forms, soon after the birth of her triplets Rachel, Sarah and Simon on 3 October 1934. Herbert Read comments, 'Although Hepworth had been arranging organic elements on bases during 1933-34, the geometric forms seem to date from 1935. She would later associate the move to abstraction with the birth of her triplets. "When I started carving again in November 1934," she wrote, "my work seemed to have changed direction although the only fresh influence had been the arrival of the children. The work was more formal and all traces of naturalism had disappeared, and for some years I was absorbed in the relationships in space, in size and texture and weight, as well as in the tensions between the forms"' (H. Read, Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, London, 1952, section 3).
The motif of three forms would become a recurring theme in Hepworth's sculpture, and she returned to this motif with renewed attention from the mid-1960s as she developed the theme of family relationships in her later sculpture.
Endowed with a purity of form and a sense of physical intimacy, Three Forms embodies Hepworth's exploration of form. Conceived in 1932 and carved from grey alabaster, the original (BH 66, Tate, London) is a seminal work of determining importance of the relationship between solid and void, and was one of the earliest examples of such an arrangement in Hepworth’s oeuvre. The present piece (BH 521) was later cast in bronze in 1971 by Morris Singer Foundry.
Three carefully arranged rounded forms stand with intricate tension, personifying the artist’s preoccupation with exploring relationships that arise when multiple forms are juxtaposed. The shapes and locations of the forms have been seen as holding some general proportional sequence, however, it is likely that such relationships were worked out by eye (see M. Gale and C. Stephens, Barbara Hepworth Works in the Tate Gallery Collection and the Barbara Hepworth Museum St Ives, London, 1999, pp. 49-50).
In the mid-1930s, Hampstead became the centre for the abstract avant-garde movement, and Hepworth, alongside key figures of the cultural scene such as Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian, Herbert Read and her then husband Ben Nicholson, established her life and practice there. It was at this time that Hepworth first explored the motif of three forms, soon after the birth of her triplets Rachel, Sarah and Simon on 3 October 1934. Herbert Read comments, 'Although Hepworth had been arranging organic elements on bases during 1933-34, the geometric forms seem to date from 1935. She would later associate the move to abstraction with the birth of her triplets. "When I started carving again in November 1934," she wrote, "my work seemed to have changed direction although the only fresh influence had been the arrival of the children. The work was more formal and all traces of naturalism had disappeared, and for some years I was absorbed in the relationships in space, in size and texture and weight, as well as in the tensions between the forms"' (H. Read, Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, London, 1952, section 3).
The motif of three forms would become a recurring theme in Hepworth's sculpture, and she returned to this motif with renewed attention from the mid-1960s as she developed the theme of family relationships in her later sculpture.