Page 46 - Studio International - June 1966

Left
Poised form 2 with circle 1965
Slate
Height 14 in.
Collection: Peter Gimpel
Right
Two figures 1964
Slate
Height 33 1/2 in.

A recent solid piece, Sphere with Colour (grey and white)
1965, creates the illusion of an interior space, a black
luminosity, in dialogue with the varying intensities of the
stone surface and with the contrasting painted discs carved
in slightly different planes. Some of the small solid slate
groups of 1965 use light to bind them together, but also
to 'change' the arrangement : the forms are at one and
the same time in a fixed and in a fluid relationship.
This intention is particularly evident in a recent pierced
slate piece, Four-square 1966. The work has a marvellous
plainness and strength. Four slabs cut square are vari-
ously pierced, each of them, with single circles of varying
diameter; they are paired and stacked parallel and at
right angles and set on a solid base that is also a square.
The work-11 inches high—has a monumental stillness;
the exquisite tension of relationship is altered with every
variation of light or of the viewer's position—not in a
casual way, but importantly. Miss Hepworth means to
create a piece of this sort as a sculptural environment —
14 feet high—a sculpture to walk through.
Perhaps time is catching up with Barbara Hepworth in
the good sense. A new generation of sculptors is rising
in England who have much more in common with her
attitudes and approach—intellectual, understated, given
to a wholly formal expression of feeling—than to those of
some of her famous contemporaries. Her new work shows
her to be in a fresh creative ferment, both questioning and
affirming her vision of things. To be alive in this way is
all any artist can ask.

Four-square (four circles) 1966
Slate Height 11 in.