Barbara Hepworth: Strings

In 1939, Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) made her first sculpture threaded with strings. For the rest of her career, she intermittently combined string with works made from plaster, wood, metal and stone. These were some of her most personally distinctive artistic achievements. In concert with her sculptural practice, she also used string-like motifs in abstract paintings and drawings. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death, Barbara Hepworth: Strings is the first exhibition dedicated to these aspects of Hepworth’s output.

Spanning three decades of Hepworth’s career, the exhibition features stringed sculptures in a comprehensive range of materials and sizes from large-scale works in wood and brass to small-scale works in bronze. A selection of unique and rarely exhibited stringed sculptures will include Hepworth’s only stone carving with strings, a ‘hand sculpture’ as she referred to her smaller work, and monumental works in brass such as Winged Figure I, which is loaned by the University of Cumbria and displayed in London for the first time in a generation.

The exhibition is curated by Piano Nobile with Michael Regan and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication with contributions by Stephen Feeke and Eleanor Clayton.

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