Sale: 496 / Evening Sale, Dec. 06. 2019 in Munich Lot 113

 

113
Barbara Hepworth
Square Forms (Two Sequences), 1963.
Bronze with greenish patina
Estimate:
€ 200,000 / $ 216,000
Sold:
€ 300,000 / $ 324,000

(incl. surcharge)
Square Forms (Two Sequences). 1963.
Bronze with greenish patina.
Bowness 331. Plith with name, date and number. Side of plinth with the foundry mark "Morris Singer Founders London". From an edition of 7 copies. Including base: 135 x 43 x 46 cm (53.1 x 16.9 x 18.1 in).
Please find more images and a video clip of this work on our homepage.
• From the important work group "Pierced Forms"
• Made the same year as the famous monumental sculpture "Single Form" in front of the UN building in New York
• This is the first time in ten years that one of the artist's sculptures is offered on the German auction market
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PROVENANCE: New Art Centre, Salisbury.
Private collection Southern Germany.

EXHIBITION: (each presumably different copy)
Barbara Hepworth, Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, May - June 1966, cat. no. 2.
5e internationale beeldententoonstelling Sonsbeek 66, Arnhem, May - September 1966, cat. no. 99.
Barbara Hepworth, Tate Gallery Retrospective, March 3 - May 19, 1968, cat. no. 131.
Open Air Sculpture at Syon Park, Gimpel Fils, London, summer 1968.
St. Ives Freedom Exhibition, September 23 - October 5, 1968.
St. Ives Group: 2nd Exhibition, Bath Festival Sculpture Exhibition, June 1969.
Barbara Hepworth, Marlborough Fine Art, London, February - March 1970, cat. no. 12.
Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture & Lithographs, Arts Council, 1970/71, cat. no. 12. Wanderausstellung: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Castle Museum, Nottingham et al
Barbara Hepworth, Hakone Open Air Museum, Japan, June - September 1970, cat. no. 14.
Russel - Cotes Modern Artists Exhibition, Bournemouth, January 6 - February 24, 1979.
Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Bronzes, Marlborough Fine Art Inc, New York, May 5 - June 29, 1979, cat. no. 23.
Barbara Hepworth, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, July 19 - October 31, 1980, cat. no. 8.
Barbara Hepworth, Storm King Art Centre, New York, May 19 - October 31, 1982.

On January 10,1903 Barbara Hepworth was born Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth in Wakefield, England. Hepworth initially studied fine arts in Leeds where she met Henry Moore with whom she would become close friends for the rest of her life. Following her education she attended the Royal College of Art in London to study sculpting. In late 1934 Hepworth attained an entirely abstract sculpture free from simplifications or abstractions of human or organic forms which could still be found with her contemporaries Brancusi and Arp. These works from Hepworth can be considered the first entirely abstract sculptures everand resembled the white reliefs that Ben Nicholson made around the same time. Hepworth developed an array of strictly reduced forms that could do without any narrative elements. By working with the material it gets its original meaning back through her creation. Her works are primarily characterized by a focus on the beauty of the material. The only dynamic element of her sculptures are the perforations, holes or so-called "pierced forms" which Hepworth put into the shaped material as the first sculptor ever. She found inspiration for this stylistic device in her physical and spiritual home Cornwall. With the outbreak of WW II she left London together with her second husband Ben Nicholson and their four children, and settled in Cornwall. In 1949 she acquired Trewyn Studios in St. Ives, where she would live and work up until the end of her life. In Cornwall she came across Mên-an-Tol, a 3000 to 4000 years old megalithic formation from the Bronze Age, a stone formation with a perforated stone in the middle. A magic place for Hepworth, too, as the stones symbolize eternity and truthfulness to her. Her new domicile in St. Ives became home to a sculpture garden, her studio was surrounded by a large garden that, due to the Mediterranean climate, had a subtropical vegetation. Over the first couple of years she used it as an open air studio integrated her sculptures into the garden landscape like natural plants. Nature’s variety was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the artist: "We find incessant renewal through observing nature, our senses for mysteries and our imagination are kept alive, and with the right perception it can give us the power to project a universal or abstract version of beauty in a plastic medium.“ (Barbara Hepworth, 1934). "Square Forms (Two Sequences)" is a typical work from Barbara Hepworth’s late perod of creation. In the late 1950s the sculptor began making bronzes and soon realized that this medium offered potential to significantly boost her works in terms of extent and size. Hepworth was inspired by her long-time friend Henry Moore, and her bronzes also contributed to the global acclaim of her works. This sculpture was made the same year (1963) that Hepworth’s monumental sculpture in front of the United Nations Secretariat in New York was unveiled, and was cast in bronze in 1966. The casting model was made with delicate netting wire and plaster, this work here was constructed from eight individual square units with a largely untreated rough surface. Through the exploration of the surface of this open and linear composition she underlines her preference for natural light. The squares' rough topography captures the movement of the sun; light and shade and the resulting interplay of gap and volume add vitality to the forms while the green-gray patina emphasizes the texture’s vibrancy and reflects Hepworth’s joy in experimenting and her appreciation for the patination, as it is the crowning process of the bronze cast. [SM]



113
Barbara Hepworth
Square Forms (Two Sequences), 1963.
Bronze with greenish patina
Estimate:
€ 200,000 / $ 216,000
Sold:
€ 300,000 / $ 324,000

(incl. surcharge)