Sun and Marble

Location

Country: Turkey
City: Ankara
Place: British Embassy

Barbara Hepworth is renowned for her work as a sculptor, but she was also a prolific graphic artist. Many of the themes and formal characteristics of her sculpture are echoed in her prints.

The relationship between form and space is central to the composition of 'Sun and Moon' – The Aegean Suite. Here, the two spherical forms of the sun and moon are balanced in an infinite space, depicted in marine colours – aquamarine, green and turquoise.  Hepworth regarded the circle as an ancient symbol, as old as the monumental standing stones near her home in St Ives, Cornwall – an influence that is evident in both her sculpture and her prints. In many of her sculptural works, the circle appears as an opening or space through marble or wood, acting as a type of negative space or void. In this work, the circles are the dominant, positive forms and it is these that draw our attention. 

Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, and studied at the Royal College of Art in London. One of Britain’s foremost sculptors, she visited Italy in 1924 to study marble carving. In Paris in 1933 she joined Abstraction-Création, an international exhibition society. Her work moved into an abstract phase, and with husband Ben Nicholson and others, she was at the forefront of the modern movement. At the outbreak of the war she moved with Nicholson to Cornwall. From 1951, after her marriage dissolved, she lived permanently in St Ives. Retrospectives were held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1952 and 1962, and the Tate in 1968. She was created DBE in 1965. After her tragic death in a fire, her studio was opened as a museum.

Places

Subjects

abstract, St. Ives School, sun, stone/rock

Materials & Techniques

lithograph

Artist

Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903 - 1975)

Title

Sun and Marble

Portfolio Title

The Aegean Suite

Edition

23/60

Date

1970-1971

Medium

Lithograph

Dimensions

height: 77.00 cm, width: 54.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Christie's Contemporary Art, June 1973

Inscription

below image: 23/60 / Barbara Hepworth

GAC number

10559