Great Abstract Artist

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31926, 1 March 1969, Page 5

Great Abstract Artist

“Such works look like harps devised by angels to tantalise mathematicians.” In those words David Hutchinson described to 8.8. C. listeners the effect of a Barbara Hepworth sculpture. He had visited a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work at the Tate Gallery in London. The exhibition represented 40 years of her art, and ranged from the first pair of marble doves carved in 1927, when she was 24-years-old, to “Two Forms to Touch” carved in a white marble last year. Throughout the exhibition, he said, could be traced the development of the great abstract artist—in stone, wood, slate and metal; from the moment when she, like her contemporary Henry Moore, "freed herself from the shackles of representative sculpture to find freedom in abstract forms.” David Hutchinson said the visitor was able to trace how Barbara Hepworth explored the astonishing conception of piercing her work with holes. She allowed light to play on surfaces hitherto dark, and made the inside of a sculpture as significant as the outside. “The veins in the marble, the grain of the wood, become part of the work of art. The curves and ellipses, in some cases, forming a counterpoint with threads drawn tight and strung across the concave surfaces.” The exhibition included small intimate “hand sculpture” and life-size works. Some larger pieces, when stepped into, gave a sensation of the weight and agelessness of the sculpture. “This exhibition X

shows how great an artist Barbara Hepworth is, and those who follow cannot ignore her,” David Hutchinson concluded.