You may have noticed that this month of Sculpture has so far presented work primarily by male artists. I promise you that I have not been ignoring female sculptors but this points out the reality that innovative female sculptors were few and far between. Until the 20th century, that is. And, fortunately for art history, the 20th and 21st centuries have produced amazingly creative female sculptors; we will start with the British artist Barbara Hepworth. A close friend of the sculptor Henry Moore, Hepworth had a similar focus on exploring abstraction in her sculptures but, whereas Moore retained the vestiges of a human form in his abstracted works, she went all in. Starting in the 1930s, she was the first sculptor to incorporated piercings or voids in her works as compositional elements. She was also a practitioner of direct carving, as opposed to using smaller models or plaster casts to fine-tune her forms before committing to the final stone. Her forms, as exemplified by “Sea Form (Porthmeor)” are overwhelmingly sensuous and organic, with a keen sense of spatial relationships. Porthmeor is a beach located close by her studio in Cornwall and “Sea Form (Porthmeor)” immediately conjures up images of rhythmic tides and natural forms discovered in the sand. The mottled bronze patina of the piece echoes the colors and textures of the sea and surf, with the top lip curling over like a breaking wave.
January's theme: Sculpture
DAME BARBARA HEPWORTH (1903 – 1975), “Sea Form”, 1958. Tate Museum, London UK.
#arthistory #art #sculpture #Hepworth
