Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)

'There is a retrospective aspect to Hepworth’s work of the 1960s and 1970s, with the abstraction of the 1930s as a particular point of reference. The formal purity of the 1930s is recalled in the simple geometric forms of a work such as Three Hemispheres, which is composed of one holed hemisphere, one hollowed and one flat' (S. Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth The Plasters The Gift to Wakefield, Farnham, 2011, p. 150).

Three Hemispheres, 1967, was cast in bronze from the plaster which she made in the same year. Hepworth's technique in plaster was unusual: she would cast the plasters using objects and containers such as cups and bowls, which she would then carve and contour before the final casting in bronze. The direct carving of the plasters was a fundamental part of the process in making Three Hemispheres: as Penelope Curtis, former Director of Tate Britain, remarked, 'there is the sense that her hand was really on these pieces' (see www.hepworthwakefield.org).

Hepworth explored the theme of the hemisphere in her work as early as 1937 in Pierced Hemisphere I (BH 93, The Hepworth Wakefield), carved in white marble. During the 1960s she developed this idea through groups of pierced and modelled hemisphere forms in a series of works, including Three Hemispheres. These curved forms are not only reminiscent of the organic shapes Hepworth witnessed in the surrounding landscape at St Ives, but they are also reflect an interest she developed for the satellite dishes at Gonhilly in Cornwall: ‘I was invited to go on board the first one when it began to go round, and it was so magical and so strange. I find such forms of our technology very exciting and inspiring’ (Hepworth quoted in A. Bowness, The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-1969, London, 1971, p. 16).

We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for this work. Dr Sophie Bowness is preparing the revised catalogue raisonné of Hepworth’s sculpture.