Barbara Hepworth: A Life of Forms

This a biography of sculptor, Dame Barbara Hepworth. With her second husband, Ben Nicholson, and her contemporary, Henry Moore, she led a group of artists moving away from representative to abstract art. She produced a form that was entirely hers. From the beginning of the 1930s she broke new ground and ten years later she was prominent among avant garde artists working in St Ives and winning international acclaim. Like others, Hepworth received much hostile criticism, but her faith in her work remained unswerving and her talent was rewarded during her life. This book analyzes Hepworth's personal life, her relationships with family and friends. She is portrayed as a woman who set herself standards that filled her life with conflict and contradiction; a person of fierce emotions and little sense of humour; and who, during the 1960s, in the opinion of some who knew her well, from the generous and composed person who had once seemed an oasis of stillness became increasingly arrogant and self-absorbed.