Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1903. She studied at Leeds College of Art in 1921 and at the RCA, 1921-24. In 1924-25 she lived in Italy, and married fellow sculptor, John Skeaping. In 1932 and 1933 she and Ben Nicholson (who then became her second husband) visited Picasso, Braque, Mondrian, Arp and Brancusi. She joined Abstraction-Création in 1933, was a member of Unit One and befriended Gabo when she and Nicholson moved to St. Ives at the outbreak of the Second World War. During the early part of the war she concentrated on drawing, using some colour. In 1948 she exhibited paintings at Reid & Lefevre, carried out with a mixture of pencil and oil paint, of surgical operations she had observed. Celebrated as a sculptor, she was nevertheless influential on the work of a number of painters and, through her commitment to close contacts with contemporary European artists, she influenced the course of art in general in Britain. [For a more detailed biography see 'Barbara Hepworth A Retrospective' cited above, pp. 157-160].
From the guide to the Barbara Hepworth's Sculpture Records comprising photographs and notes compiled by the sculptor, 1925-1975, (Tate Gallery Archive GB 70)
