Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, Hepworth studied at Leeds School of Art, then from 1921 at the Royal College of Art, from 1924-5 living in Italy as the result of a West Riding Travelling Scholarship. She married the sculptor John Skeaping in 1924, and she exhibited with him although was marriage dissolved in1933. In Rome, she had learned the technique of carving. In the early 1930s her interest in abstract sculpture developed, encouraged by several developments. She had met the painter Ben Nicholson in 1931 - marrying him shortly afterwards. Her marriage with Nicholson was dissolved 1951, but during her time with him visited the studios of Arp, Brancusi, Braque, Picasso and Gabo.
She became a member of several forward-looking groups, such as the 7 & 5 Society, Unit One and Abstraction-Creation. In 1939, Hepworth moved to St Ives, Cornwall, where she became an influential member of the artistic community, being a founder member of the Penwith Society in 1949. In 1947-8 she had made her notable series of drawings of operating theatres, and in 1949 she held her first solo show of drawings at Durlacher Bros, in New York, which extended her growing reputation.
Two works were commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and she won second prize in The Unknown Political Prisoner competition two years later. In the 1950s she was to design decor for productions at the Old Vic theatre and for Covent Garden opera house, She was given several retrospective exhibitions and having work purchased by major international galleries. She became Dame Barbara Hepworth in 1965. After a long battle with cancer, she died on 20 May 1975 in a horrific fire at her home. Her 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.
