Square Forms (Two Sequences)

Having dedicated much of her early career to direct carving in stone and wood, Hepworth turned to bronze in 1956. She discovered that the versatility and strength of this medium considerably broadened both the range and scale of her work. It simply would not have been possible to create the stacked vertical elements in Square Forms (Two Sequences) in either carved wood or carved stone, with each square set at a slight angle from its neighbour on the vertical plane, giving movement as each sequence rises. The present sculpture demonstrates Hepworth's masterful ability to achieve equilibrium between the demands of this new material and its expressive possibilities. Commenting in ‘Artist’s notes on technique’ (1962) in M. Shepherd, Barbara Hepworth, London 1963, the artist stated, ‘My ideas from the beginning are conceived for a particular material, either wood, stone, marble or bronze and the intense pleasure, to me, is in relating oneself to the ‘life’ in the particular material. I have used bronze and other metals only in the last seven or eight years, and when working with bronze I build an armature and work direct in plaster of Paris which I prefer to clay, as it is possible to cut it and get a surface nearer to my personal sense of form. Certain forms, I find, re-occur during one's lifetime and I have found some considerable pleasure in reinterpreting forms originally carved, and which in bronze, by greater attenuation, can give a new aspect to certain themes’ (S. Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth Writings and Conversations, London, 2015, p. 162). Hepworth’s friend, the art critic Herbert Read, initially sceptical of Hepworth's use of this new material, remarked, ‘I have now come to realise that what I previously discerned as the artist's fundamental purpose, 'to infuse the formal perfection of geometry with the vital grace of nature' is as fully realised in bronze as in carved wood or stone’ (H. Read, quoted in exhibition catalogue, Barbara Hepworth, Valencia, IVAM, 2004, p. 67).

Although cast in 1966, the present sculpture was first conceived in 1963, whilst Hepworth was working on her largest and most significant public commission, the monumental Single Form, 1961-64, destined to be unveiled outside the United Nations Secretariat, New York on 11 June 1964. The sculptor made all of her bronzes by constructing an aluminium mesh armature and covering it in plaster with a spatula, but whereas the sculptor carved out the surface of Single Form using axes and other tools, she constructed the present sculpture out of eight individual square units and left the smears of plaster largely unaltered. Her evident exploration of surface within this open and linear composition underscores her preference for natural light. The rugged topography of the squares, which includes a recessed half sphere, catches the movement of the sun; the changing light and shadow lend vitality to the forms through the interplay of void and volume. In an unpublished typescript from circa 1959 on her working practice, the artist comments, ‘… in the latest bronzes I am aiming at getting, not only the qualities of molten metal and the poignancy of fire but also a tactile expression by contrast of part-carved and part-plastic technique in the plaster’ (B. Hepworth, quoted in S. Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth Writings and Conversations, London, 2015, p. 130).

The majority of Hepworth’s surviving plaster prototypes form part of the gift to The Hepworth Wakefield by the Hepworth Estate. The plaster prototype for Square Forms (Two Sequences) survives and can be seen in the greenhouse, in situ at The Barbara Hepworth Museum, St Ives alongside the plaster prototypes for Sea Form (Porthmeor) and The Bride from The Family of Man (see S. Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth The Plasters The Gift to Wakefield, Farnham, 2011, p. 63). Sophie Bowness comments, ‘Alan Bowness’s original idea was that these prototypes would be rotated with others then stored at the Palais de Danse [in St Ives], although in practice, this did not take place and they were given to the Hepworth Wakefield in 2011’ (S. Bowness, Barbara Hepworth The Sculptor in the Studio, London, 2017, pp. 118, 120).

The geometric structure of the present work, which is a marked departure from Hepworth's customary organic curves, recalls Constantin Brancusi's stacked primitive forms in his totemic wooden pedestals and works such as Endless Column, 1938 (Târgu Jiu, Romania). Like Brancusi, Hepworth also created bronze versions of her carved sculptures: however, the two sequences of rising twisting squares may also reference the double-helix molecular model of DNA, in which two chains of polynucleotides coil around the same axis. Indeed, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize for discovering the double helix in 1962, just before Hepworth began work on Square Forms. Nature's diversity was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the sculptor, as she noted: ‘In the contemplation of nature we are perpetually renewed, our sense of mystery and our imagination is kept alive ... it gives us the power to project into a plastic medium some universal or abstract vision of beauty’ (B. Hepworth, quoted in exhibition catalogue, Barbara Hepworth, Valencia, IVAM, 2004, p. 131). Writing in March 1970, Edwin Mullins observed that for Hepworth, ‘the maximum richness might be obtained by the greatest simplicity of means. This faith in the eloquence of the bare statement is a quality she had shared with the two artists who in their own achievements have been closest of all to her: the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and her second husband, the painter Ben Nicholson. The best of both of them is in the blood-stream of her art’ (E. Mullins, exhibition catalogue, Barbara Hepworth, Plymouth, City Art Gallery, 1970, n.p.).

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.