Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth was an English sculptor and artist and her work resembles Modernism greatly. She is very famous for a lot of her works, ‘Family of Man’ coming to mind. She was born in North England, Yorkshire, to be precise, and was among artists such as Naum Gabo, the constructivist, and Ben Nicholson in St.Ives during World War 2.

 This sculpture is called Winged Figure, and was created in 1953. My first thoughts were that it was extremely abstract, and was a shape of the mind put into metal. There are two parts of this sculpture, both of which bend inwards. They both have holes inside them, both different shapes. I think it is supposed to be a very fluid motion frozen in time, so is supposed to look like it is morphing. In the middle, there is a jumble of wires, metal sticks. They are all strung from one side of the sculpture to the other. Winged Figure is a very difficult object to explain and analyse, as it very abstract and requires more visuals than text. I can see why she would call it Winged Figure, as it does almost look like a creature, almost like a bat. I know from research that the final sculpture has been cast in aluminium and the rods have been replaced with stainless steel. Overall I like this piece of artwork, as it looks amazing and leaves you wondering where her thought process was at the time she thought of this sculpture. 

This sculpture is quite futuristic, or at least, what futuristic was 20 years ago. There are many rounded shapes here, as well as sharp edged shapes, giving the viewer a sense of variety. I like how each set of sculptures look different and have different shapes within them, as there are sometimes squares with holes in them and at others just random pieces. Everything looks strangely organised, even though it can also been as disorganised. When I say organised I mean it feels very forced and that someone has placed all of the objects specifically in that order, yet can still look like random pieces of the sculpture were placed on each other. The colour of these blocks are grey, and don’t really stand out, but they don’t need to. This is because instead of an oil painting, this is a sculpture, and will be the first thing you will see if you walk into a museum and see old art.