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Lot Essay
Dr. Sophie Bowness will include this work in her forthcoming revised Hepworth catalogue raisonné under the catalogue number BH 441.
To Hepworth, “the carving of a stone by a sculptor’s hand is intimately associated with the hollowing of a cliff by the waves and with the hollows and cavities of a human body” (S. Bowness, Barbara Hepworth, Writings and Conversations, 2015, p. 200). In the smooth, rounded hollows of Two Forms (Orkney), Hepworth expresses her inimitable sensitivity to landscape and the human form, combining a solid monumentality with gentle suggestions of physicality.
During the 1960s, Hepworth made many of her most intriguing sculptures. Often two or three-part works on an intimate scale, she experimented in bronze and slate as well as wood and stone (fig. 1). Two Forms (Orkney) is an prime example of Hepworth’s experimentations from this period: two cast bronze forms are mounted as a pair on a wooden plinth, their bronze patina polished to a high, golden sheen. One is pierced with a perfectly circular hole, the other carved with a smooth, concave hollow. The two shapes give a harmonious impression of symbiosis; the tip of the pear-like form leans towards a corresponding indent atop the other. The perfectly circular concave hollow parallels the aperture in its pair.
Their verticality recalls the motif of the Neolithic standing stone, a favorite source of inspiration for Hepworth. The stone menhirs which Hepworth knew were those of the Penwith peninsular in west Cornwall where she lived and worked. These haunting affirmations of man’s relationship with the landscape are also found on the islands of Orkney, a place Hepworth would never visit but the ruggedness of which, drenched in rich, clear Atlantic light, she could easily imagine. Two Forms (Orkney) is imbued with a sensuality which tempers the lithic weight of the sculpture. The almost abdominal swell of the left form suggests a human shape, an egg-like fertility, or the softness of a sea-worn pebble. “I think of the works as objects which rise out of the land or the sea, mysteriously,” Hepworth said in 1970. “You can’t make a sculpture without it being a thing—a creature, a figure, a fetish” (quoted in A. Bowness, ed., op. cit., p. 14). Two Forms (Orkney) exemplifies Hepworth’s singular combination of the symbolic figure, rooted firmly in nature and natural materials, with pure, geometric form.
Hepworth was connected to the islands of Orkney through her close friend and patron, Margaret Gardiner. The two had remained friends since first meeting in London in the 1930s, and Gardiner had supported Hepworth by buying her work often. In 1979, she established an art gallery at Stromness in Orkney, known as the Pier Arts Centre. She donated a significant collection of works by Hepworth, many of which had until then resided in her garden. Hepworth named her sculptures by association after their execution, and it is likely with fondness that she thought of her close friend’s windswept garden at the opposite end of the British Isles, a distant landscape and yet one which she could imagine intimately from her studio on the luminous, dramatic Cornish coast.
To Hepworth, “the carving of a stone by a sculptor’s hand is intimately associated with the hollowing of a cliff by the waves and with the hollows and cavities of a human body” (S. Bowness, Barbara Hepworth, Writings and Conversations, 2015, p. 200). In the smooth, rounded hollows of Two Forms (Orkney), Hepworth expresses her inimitable sensitivity to landscape and the human form, combining a solid monumentality with gentle suggestions of physicality.
During the 1960s, Hepworth made many of her most intriguing sculptures. Often two or three-part works on an intimate scale, she experimented in bronze and slate as well as wood and stone (fig. 1). Two Forms (Orkney) is an prime example of Hepworth’s experimentations from this period: two cast bronze forms are mounted as a pair on a wooden plinth, their bronze patina polished to a high, golden sheen. One is pierced with a perfectly circular hole, the other carved with a smooth, concave hollow. The two shapes give a harmonious impression of symbiosis; the tip of the pear-like form leans towards a corresponding indent atop the other. The perfectly circular concave hollow parallels the aperture in its pair.
Their verticality recalls the motif of the Neolithic standing stone, a favorite source of inspiration for Hepworth. The stone menhirs which Hepworth knew were those of the Penwith peninsular in west Cornwall where she lived and worked. These haunting affirmations of man’s relationship with the landscape are also found on the islands of Orkney, a place Hepworth would never visit but the ruggedness of which, drenched in rich, clear Atlantic light, she could easily imagine. Two Forms (Orkney) is imbued with a sensuality which tempers the lithic weight of the sculpture. The almost abdominal swell of the left form suggests a human shape, an egg-like fertility, or the softness of a sea-worn pebble. “I think of the works as objects which rise out of the land or the sea, mysteriously,” Hepworth said in 1970. “You can’t make a sculpture without it being a thing—a creature, a figure, a fetish” (quoted in A. Bowness, ed., op. cit., p. 14). Two Forms (Orkney) exemplifies Hepworth’s singular combination of the symbolic figure, rooted firmly in nature and natural materials, with pure, geometric form.
Hepworth was connected to the islands of Orkney through her close friend and patron, Margaret Gardiner. The two had remained friends since first meeting in London in the 1930s, and Gardiner had supported Hepworth by buying her work often. In 1979, she established an art gallery at Stromness in Orkney, known as the Pier Arts Centre. She donated a significant collection of works by Hepworth, many of which had until then resided in her garden. Hepworth named her sculptures by association after their execution, and it is likely with fondness that she thought of her close friend’s windswept garden at the opposite end of the British Isles, a distant landscape and yet one which she could imagine intimately from her studio on the luminous, dramatic Cornish coast.