We drive to Wakefield for our train back to London. First of all we spend a couple of hours at The Hepworth. This gallery is named after the artist and sculptor, Barbara Hepworth, so first a few words about her.
Barbara Hepworth 1903-75 was born into a middle-class family from the West Riding of Yorkshire, now known as West Yorkshire. She trained in Sculpture at Leeds School of Art (1920-1) and, on a county scholarship, at the Royal College of Art (1921-4), meeting the painters Raymond Coxon and Edna Ginesi and the sculptor Henry Moore. Hepworth was runner-up to John Skeaping for the 1924 Prix de Rome, and travelled to Florence on a West Riding Travel Scholarship. After visiting Rome and Siena with Skeaping, they were married in Florence on 13 May 1925 and moved to Rome, where both began carving stone. In November 1926, they returned to London. Links forged through the British School at Rome with the sculptor Richard Bedford (a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum), ensured that the collector George Eumorfopoulos visited their studio show in 1927 and bought two Hepworths. The couple moved to 7 The Mall Studios in Hampstead in 1928 (where Hepworth remained until 1939). With Bedford and Moore, they became leading figures in the 'new movement'. Successful joint exhibitions in 1928 (Beaux Arts Gallery, London and Alex. Reid and Lefevre, Glasgow) and 1930 (Tooth's) consisted of animal and figure sculptures in stone and wood. They joined the London Group and the 7 & 5 Society in 1930-1. A son, Paul, was born in August 1929, but the marriage was deteriorating and in 1931 Hepworth met Ben Nicholson (then married to Winifred Nicholson), who joined her on holiday at Happisburgh, Norfolk. She and Skeaping were amicably divorced in 1933. In 1934 Hepworth gave birth to triplets; she married Nicholson four years later.
Hepworth and Nicholson revealed their move towards abstraction in 1932. This became the abiding direction of her work. Establishing links with the continental avant garde, the couple visited the Parisian studios of Arp, Brancusi, Mondrian, Braque and Picasso. Curtailed by the war, Hepworth and Nicholson evacuated to St Ives, Cornwall. They stayed with Margaret Mellis and Adrian Stokes at Little Park Owles, Carbis Bay. Domestic demands and lack of space restricted Hepworth to small sculpture and painting until, on moving to Chy-an-Kerris, Carbis Bay in 1942, she secured a studio. Her first major solo exhibition (Temple Newsam, Leeds 1943) was followed by a monograph by William Gibson (Barbara Hepworth: Sculptress, 1946). She was prominent amongst St Ives artists, forming a focus in 1949 for the establishment of the Penwith's Society of Artisits with Nicholson, Peter Lanyon and others, and helping to attract international attention to the group's exhibitions. Although Hepworth's contribution to the 1950 Venice Biennale was dogged by comparisons with Moore, two retrospectives - in Wakefield (1951) and London (Whitechapel 1954) - and Read's monograph (1952) confirmed her post-war reputation. She bought Trewyn Studio, St Ives in 1949, where she lived after her divorce from Nicholson two years later. She visited Greece in 1954 in an effort to recover from the sudden death of Paul Skeaping (1953).
Hepworth was especially active within, and on behalf of, the artistic community in St Ives during its period of post-war international prominence. Her experience of the Cornish landscape was acknowledged in her choice of titles. In a wider context, Hepworth also represented a link with pre-war ideals in a climate of social and physical reconstruction; this was exemplified by her two sculptures for the South Bank site of the Festival of Britain (1951).
Hepworth's international standing was confirmed by the Grand Prix of the 1959 São Paolo Bienal, which came amid honorary degrees, the CBE (1958) and the DBE (1965), and a second Whitechapel exhibition (1962) and a European tour (1964). rks in 1964 and a further nine in 1967 prior to the 1968 retrospective at the Gallery. With her long-standing friend the potter Bernard Leach, she was awarded the Freedom of St Ives in 1968 as an acknowledgement of her importance to the town. After a long battle with cancer, she died there on 20 May 1975 in a horrific fire at her home. The studio was designated the Barbara Hepworth Museum in the following year and, on coming under the Tate's aegis in 1980, secured an unrivalled collection of her work for the Gallery.
The Hepworth Wakefield opened on 21 May 2011. The gallery is situated on the south side of the River Calder and takes its name from Barbara.
The gallery was designed by British architect David Chipperfield. It is composed of ten trapezoidal blocks; its upper-level galleries are lit by natural light from large windows in the pitched roofs. Its windows have views of the river, historic waterfront and the city skyline. The building's façade is clad with self-compacting pigmented concrete made on site, the first of its kind in the United Kingdom. The architects selected the material to emphasise the gallery's sculptural appearance, and to 'fit in' with the industrial landscape. The gallery has ground-floor visitor facilities, including a café bar overlooking the river, a learning studio, an auditorium and shop. The building's brutalist design is not universally popular with local people, but we love it.
The gallery houses 44 plaster and aluminum working models donated by Dame Barbara Hepworth's family and temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. Items from Wakefield's art collection spanning the 16th century to the present day are on display, including works by Henry Moore, who was born in the Wakefield area, Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Walter Sickert, LS Lowry and David Hockney.
Here is Barbara Hepworth's Two Forms, 1937.
And here a wonderful selection of her work
There are also photographs by Martin Parr, including an exhibition dedicated to the Rhubarb Triangle. http://www.hepworthwakefield.org/martin-parr/
Most of all I love his photos of 1980s Birkenhead. Please take a look
https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/the-last-resort-martin-parr/
We have an uneventful train trip home. We had a great time, special thanks to our hosts.
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