Whenever I have a trip out of London (embarrassingly rare I know) I aim to visit a museum or gallery.
This time it was a welcome return to the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne where this excellent show, Barbara Hepworth: Life and Art, is on till early September.
Exhibitions like this are perfect for me: full of content yet manageable in size.
Famous as a sculptor, it’s easy to forget how good Hepworth’s drawings are and this show gives us many beautiful, sensitive examples.
The Hands 1948 (below) is one of a series showing a medical team. Here they are before surgery. The theatre sister on the left is the only woman in the group and defined with the most detailed hands.
Her mark-making can be so delicate yet the rendering of volume and mass remains her prime concern.
Hepworth also designed for the stage – Sophocles’s Electra at the Old Vic theatre, London. Look at how the shadows extend the sculpture (Apollo 1951), integrating it with its surroundings.
Space exploration and lunar landings increased her fascination with circular forms (it’s not just me): sun and moon as in this print from the mid-sixties.
This small bronze sculpture on a turntable (Six forms on a Circle 1967) reminds me of a contemporary Stone Henge .
Do visit this if you can – I thoroughly recommend it.
