Barbara Hepworth trivia | 48 facts about the famous sculptor

Barbara Hepworth is a famous English sculptor, who was currently honored by google with a google doodle.

1. Her full name is Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth.
2. She was born on the 10th of January in1903.
3. She was an English artist and sculptor.
4. She’s the the eldest child of Gertrude and Herbert Hepworth.
5. Her father was a civil engineer for the West Riding County Council, who in 1921 advanced to the role of County Surveyor.
6. Hepworth attended Wakefield Girls’ High School, where she was awarded music prizes at the age of 12 .
7. This is the reason why she won a scholarship to study at the Leeds School of Art from 1920.
8. It was there that she met her fellow Yorkshireman, Henry Moore.
9. They became friends and established a friendly rivalry that lasted professionally for many years.
10. Hepworth successfully won a county scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London.
11. She studied the from 1921 until she was awarded the diploma of the Royal College of Art in 1924
12. Following her studies at the RCA, Hepworth travelled to Florence, Italy, in 1924 on a West Riding Travel Scholarship.
13. Hepworth was also the runner-up for the Prix-de-Rome, which the sculptor John Skeaping won.
14. After travelling with him to Siena and Rome, Hepworth married Skeaping on 13 May 1925 in Florence.
15. In Italy, Hepworth learned how to carve marble from sculptor Giovanni Ardini.
16. Hepworth and Skeaping returned to London in 1926, where they exhibited their works together from their flat.
17. Their son Paul was born in London in 1929.
18. In 1931, Hepworth met and fell in love with abstract painter Ben Nicholson.
19. However, both were still married at the time.
20. At Hepworth’s request, she and Skeaping were divorced that year.
21. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture.
22. She was one of the few female artists of her generation to achieve international prominence.
23. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the Second World War.
24. Her early work was highly interested in abstraction and art movements on the continent.
25. In 1931, Hepworth was the first to sculpt the pierced figures that are characteristic of her work.
26. She and Henry Moore led the path to modernism in sculpture.
27. In 1933, Hepworth travelled with Nicholson to France.
28. It France where she met Pablo Picasso.
29. Hepworth later became involved with the Paris-based art movement, Abstraction-Création.
30. In 1933, Hepworth co-founded the Unit One art movement with Nicholson and Paul Nash, the critic Herbert Read, and the architect Wells Coates.
31. The movement sought to unite Surrealism and abstraction in British art.
32. Hepworth, Nicholson and their children went to live in Cornwall at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939
33. Her eldest son, Paul, was killed on 13 February 1953 in a plane crash while serving with the Royal Air Force in Thailand.
34. A memorial to him, Madonna and Child, is in the parish church of St Ives.
35. Exhausted, in part from her son’s death, Hepworth travelled to Greece with her friend Margaret Gardiner in August 1954.
36. They visited Athens, Delphi and many of the Aegean Islands.
37. When Hepworth returned to St Ives from Greece in August 1954, she found that Gardiner had sent her a large shipment of Nigerian guarea hardwood.
38. Although she received only a single tree trunk, Hepworth noted that the shipment from Nigeria to the Tilbury docks came in at 17 tons.
39. Between 1954 and 1956 Hepworth sculpted six pieces out of guarea wood, many of which were inspired by her trip to Greece, such as Corinthos (1954) and Curved Form (Delphi) (1955).
40. Hepworth greatly increased her studio space in 1960 when she purchased the Palais de Danse.
41. The Palais de Danse was a former cinema and dance hall, that was situated across the street from Trewyn.
42. She used this new space to work on large-scale commissions.
43. She also experimented with lithography in her late career.
44. She produced two lithographic suites with the Curwen Gallery and its director Stanley Jones, one in 1969 and one in 1971.
45. The latter was entitled “The Aegean Suite” (1971) and was inspired by Hepworth’s trip to Greece in 1954
46. The artist also produced a set of lithographs entitled “Opposing Forms” (1970) with Marlborough Fine Art in London.
47. Barbara Hepworth died in an accidental fire at her Trewyn studios.
48. She died on 20th of May in 1975 at the age of 72.