Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)

First exhibited in November 1963 at Gimpel Fils, London, in the British Council touring exhibition in Scandinavia from September 1964 - March 1965, in the travelling exhibition starting in Otterlo at the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller in 1965 and then Hepworth's major retrospective at Tate, London in 1968. Hepworth gifted Herbert Read a cast of Pierced Form (Amulet) on the occasion of his seventieth birthday in December 1963.

Pierced Form (Amulet), 1962, prompted Hepworth to make Pierced Form the following year, a larger marble sculpture now in the Collection of Tate, London. Carved from Pentelicon marble, Pierced Form stands at almost 50 inches high and echoes the form of the smaller bronze which inspired it, including the shaped base. 'The subtitle 'amulet', meaning a talisman or charm, was one which Hepworth used in the preceding year for the small bronzes Reclining Solitary Form (Amulet), 1961 (BH 307) and Upright Solitary Form (Amulet), 1961 (BH 308).

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.