Art Collections Online
Oval Sculpture (Delos)
HEPWORTH, Barbara (1903 - 1975)
[image: Oval Sculpture (Delos)]
Date: 1955
Media: scented guarea wood with painted concavities
Size: 85.8 x 122.0 cm
Acquired: 1982; Purchase
Accession Number: NMW A 2416
Barbara Hepworth married Ben Nicholson in 1932 and was established as a leading and uncompromising exponent of abstraction by 1950. In 1954-5 she carved several abstract sculptures with Grecian titles from a consignment of seventeen tons of Nigerian hardwood. Amongst her grandest and most lyrical works, these were inspired by the landscape and antiquities of Greece. Delos is both the site of the cave of Apollo and the island around which the Cyclades lie in an oval form.
This work is currently on display:
Gallery 12
National Museum Cardiff, level 4
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1 comment
Stephen West on 11 October 2010, 10:44
A fantastic sense of peace, solidity, scale and grace in this great example of Hepworth's wooden sculpture. It would be great to have other Hepworth in the collection and also her first husband John Skeaping. Also in view of the influence on David Nash and others and complement the early 20th C collection (Gaudier-Breska) to purchase a work by Brancusi a wooden sculpture or if that's impossible at least one of his own photographs...
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