BARBARA HEPWORTH
CARVINGS AND DRAWINGS
Herbert Read [introduction]
Herbert Read [introduction]: BARBARA HEPWORTH CARVINGS AND DRAWINGS. London: Lund Humphries, 1952. First edition. Quarto. Olive boards stamped in black. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 178 pp. 227 monochrome plates and 4 color plates. Scarce jacket with light wear to the top edge and lightly fingered. Total of six small inkstamps on front and read endpapers courtesy of the inkstamp enthusiast former owner, otherwise a very good copy in a very good or better price-clipped dust jacket.
9.75 x 11.75 book with 178 pages and 227 monochrome plates and 4 color plates. This elegant volume was produced using a variety of paper stocks and masterfully printed by Percy Lund. This volume displays the magnificent typography and sensitive design of Herbert Spencer (uncredited). This book remains the best volume on Hepworths' work.
Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975) won a scholarship to study at Leeds School of Art in 1920, where she first met Henry Moore. The following year she was awarded a county major scholarship to study sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. She graduated in 1924 and was awarded a further scholarship for one year's study abroad and went to Italy where she stayed for two years. She lived first in Florence and then Rome where she learned marble carving.
As her work moved towards abstraction in the early 1930s, she began associating closely with leading British and European modernists. She was invited to join the internationalist group Abstraction-Création in 1933, and the following year became a member of Unit One, a group of progressive artists and architects based in London (Moore was also a member, as was Ben Nicholson). She married Nicholson in 1938 and they moved to St Ives, Cornwall in 1939. Her first retrospective exhibition was held at Temple Newsam, Leeds in 1943, and she represented Britain at the XXV Venice Biennale in 1950. During the 1950s she became increasingly established, receiving several major commissions for public sculpture, including a commission for the Festival of Britain in 1951.