Next year, Piano Nobile will stage a unique exhibition about one of the most important artists and sculptors of the 20th century, Barbara Hepworth.
Barbara Hepworth: Strings will bring together a significant group of Barbara Hepworth’s (1903–1975) string works, drawn from public and private collections, including sculptures as well as drawings and paintings that continue the string motif.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death, the exhibition will include several works that have not been shown to the public for over half a century, as well as sculpture that has never been exhibited before.
A towering influence on modern sculpture, Hepworth’s biomorphic abstract works can be seen in public parks and galleries across the UK and beyond. This exhibition comes at a time in which interest in her work continues to grow, and her legacy as one of the most important artists in the 20th century is becoming assured. Tate Britain staged a major retrospective in 2015, and in 2020 she was honoured with a blue plaque outside her former London home.
Materials
Hepworth began making sculptures in a variety of materials that incorporated strings in 1939 and continued the practice throughout her career until her death. Her non-figurative paintings and drawings also used string motifs, and the exhibition will create a dialogue between these two-dimensional works and her stringed sculptures.
The stringed sculptures began soon after her arrival in St Ives, which would become her home for the rest of her life and where the eponymous Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden is now located. The landscape of Cornwall influenced her fascination with this new concept, where strings became a metaphor for her connection to the natural world. As she noted, “the strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills”.
In sculpture, the strings often bridge wave-like arms to enclose interiors, or twist through voids of space. They have a rhythmic and musical quality, in which the allegorical and physical are constantly entwined, exemplified in works such as Curved Form (Wave II) (1959).
The wide range of works on display will showcase how Hepworth’s strings are imbued with a multitude of references and interpretations. A series of works entitled Orpheus elicits myths of the Greek musician’s lyre and its deep connection to nature, and the first in the series, Theme on Electronics (Orpheus) (1956), will be exhibited to the public for the first time. Commissioned by the electronics company Mullard, the work is a cold-rolled brass sculpture that provided the stimulus for the Orpheus series which would continue for the next three years. This was an important touchstone in Hepworth’s career as she moved from stone and wood to bronze and brass.
Monumental
Hepworth worked strings into both small and large-scale works. The exhibition will include the unique work Small Stone with Black Strings (1952) which is the only stringed work that Hepworth made using stone. Very small and delicate, the hand-sized work carved from alabaster measures 14cm across. By contrast Winged Figure (1963) was a monumental work, commissioned for John Lewis’s flagship store on Oxford Street, featuring strings bursting out from the centre, attaching the bladed wings together, and guiding the eye around the sculpture. Maquette for Winged Figure (1957) which uses sheet metal and rods, and was the original proposal that John Lewis accepted, will be on display.
Hepworth’s talent took her around the world, and she met many other great artists of the day and experimented with different techniques. Henry Moore (1898–1986) was a contemporary at the Leeds School of Art, and she learnt to carve in Rome following a West Riding Travel Scholarship. Later she would travel to Paris, where string first emerged as a sculptural device, to see the studios of Jean Arp (1886–1986) and Picasso (1881–1973). When in St Ives, she witnessed Naum Gabo’s (1890–1970) spiral motif experiments. However, only Hepworth would use string to suggest organic forms and natural rhythms, exploring new territory in modernist sculpture.
This exhibition will be an exciting and focused look at an artist who influenced the landscape of modernist art in the 20th century and continues to inspire and provoke today. It continues Piano Nobile’s recent exploration of important British artists, including a recent, critically acclaimed exhibition on Hepworth’s second husband, the artist Ben Nicholson (1894–1982).
Adventurous
Curator Michael Regan said: “Hepworth is known to us today for her adventurous use of metal and rock to break down the boundaries between space and mass, giving the same value to both. Equally, as this exhibition will show, she used strings to create in her sculptures the tension between light and darkness, presence and absence, solidity and weightlessness. Most importantly, they symbolised the interconnectivity between the human figure and the landscape in a real, physical sense.”
A fully illustrated publication on Hepworth’s string works and their historical context will also accompany the exhibition. It will include contributions from the curator as well as other leading and emerging authorities on Hepworth’s work. Full details will be released shortly.
• Barbara Hepworth, Theme on electronics (Orpheus), 1956
• Barbara Hepworth, Small stone with black strings, 1952
• Barbara Hepworth, Lines in Movement, 1942
All images © Bowness / courtesy of Piano Nobile, London
Piano Nobile is at 96 / 129 Portland Road, London W11 4LW.
Monday–Friday 10am–6pm; Saturday 11am–4pm.
Nearest tube: Holland Park.
More at www.piano-nobile.com / Instagram @pianonobilegallery
See also: Maison Parisienne at PAD London
