Barbara Hepworth, Tate Britain ★★★★★

Culture Whisper says ★★★★★
Below is our preview, giving background information about the show


Barbara Hepworth reinvented sculpture: breaking the block of stone or wood, piercing it through the middle and bringing it down from the plinth. Tate Britain’s major 2015 retrospective reminds us of Hepworth’s international importance, as well as the special place she holds in British hearts with this first London-based exhibition of her work.
Barbara Hepworth biography
Born in Wakefield, where there is now a dedicated Barbara Hepworth museum, Hepworth trained at Leeds School of Art and then the Royal College of Art where she met fellow revolutionary sculptor Henry Moore. She and Moore, along with sculptor Richard Bedford, became leading figures in the movement for direct carving: the practice of working directly onto a material. This traditional nineteenth-century method was the norm amongst established sculptors such as Auguste Rodin, who relied upon craftsmen to carve his marble sculptures for him.
Barbara Hepworth: art and style
The amorphous and simplified form of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture has continually pushed the medium to its extremes. Along with her husband Ben Nicholson, Hepworth was at the forefront of abstraction in Britain. We should also remember that Hepworth was a skilled draughtsman, her light works in pencil in particular possessing a special allure. She considered the artist role to be similar to that of a surgeon, and drew a number of sketches during surgery.
Tate Britain exhibition 2015
In this highly anticipated Tate Britain Hepworth exhibition, expect an emphasis to be placed on the sculptor’s global standing and her international commissions such as the Single Form (1961-4) for the UN building in New York. There will also be a rare look at Hepworth’s unseen experimentation in photography and film.
One for the diary, make sure you book tickets early!