20180417

The Beauty of Art part 16 - the answers

The name of the sculpture in Beauty of Art part 16 is Single Form.
It is a bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. The version I showed in the previous post is the big version of this piece of art, the one displayed at the Headquarters of the United Nations.

There are also smaller versions displayed elsewhere, for instance this one in Battersea park


Picture by QuentinUK at English Wikipedia

The connection to the known Swede I mentioned, is that this work was commissioned as a memorial for Dag Hammarskjöld. Dag would have liked this, since he was a collector of Hepworth's work. 

Barbara was working on a sculpture when she found out about Dag's death. She named it after the month when she got the news: September. It was made in Walnut and clearly inspired the Single Form that was later put outside of the United Naion's headquarters. 


Single Form (September) Barbara Hepworth Museum, St Ives


Barbara Hepworth was a British sculptor who was also skilled in others art forms like music, painting and lithography. She became known and appreciated during her life time. She won prizes and was able to make a living as an artist.

Barbara was married and divorced twice, both husbands were fellow artists. She was the mother of four children and had to endure the death of her son in an air crash. She created Madonna and child as a memorial for him.



Like so many artists, Barbara spent time with other artists in Paris, but she spent most of her time in St Ives where she was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided there during the Second World War.

Even though her work is based on form and abstraction, Hepworth's art was about relationships. Between forms, between humans and landscapes and between individuals.


Thank you Elena for introducing me to this artist I had not heard about before! 

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