Sun and Marble

Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903 - 1975)

Lithograph

1970-1971

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Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

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  • About the work
    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. 


  • About the artist
    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.
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  • Details
    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