Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth is now acknowledged as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Combining Hepworth’s public statements with her private correspondences, this fascinating biography offers a penetrating insight into the remarkable life, work and legacy of this singular artist. Hepworth was reproached for single-mindedness in her lifetime, with critics and commentators framing both the artist and her work as ‘cool and restrained’. A continued focus on her modernist abstract sculpture of the 1930s and its relation to the work of her male contemporaries has left elements of her work and related passions overlooked. This fully illustrated account of her life and work reflects for the first time Hepworth’s multifaceted and interdisciplinary approach, bringing together as never before her interests in dance, music, poetry, contemporary politics, science and technology; her engagement with these fields through friends and networks as well as her artistic practice; and the ways in which she fused sometimes seemingly conflicting disciplines and ideas into one coherent and inspirational philosophy of art and life.