DENIS MITCHELL (1912-1993)

Between 1949 and 1960, Denis Mitchell was an assistant to Barbara Hepworth, and it was from her that he acquired the guarea wood which he used to make Oracle. Hepworth had acquired a consignment of the wood from Nigeria, which totalled 17 tons. A.M. Hammacher recalls, 'The heavy pieces of African tree trunks arrived in the garden of her Trewyn Studio in St Ives, filling the space with their 'savage quality of smell', their enormous size and weight - they were between forty-two and forty-eight inches in diameter and weighed two to four tons a piece' (Barbara Hepworth, London, 1968, pp. 115, 117, cited in P. Curtis and C. Stephens (eds.), exhibition catalogue, Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World, London, Tate Britain, 2015, p. 87).