Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975, born in West Yorkshire, UK) was a leading modernist British sculptor and one of the most important figures in British abstract art. Her curvaceous sculptures, produced mainly from her home in the fishing village of St Ives, Cornwall, reflect the nature that surrounded her. She married Ben Nicholson in 1931 with whom she had triplets.

Hepworth made many sculptures that refer to Greece after her visit in 1954 (she travelled with a friend to Athens, Epidauros, Mycenae, Delphi, Crete, Rhodes, Cos, Patmos, Delos, and Santorini). Torso III (Galatea) belongs to a group of three bronzes made in 1958 [including Torso I (Ulysses) and Torso II (Torcello) inspired by Greece]. The form has a bone-like appearance like a fragment or archaeological find worn down by time and abrasion but also recalls the human figure.

Hepworth’s trip to Greece followed the death of her son Paul in an airplane crash in 1953. Though she had first employed Greek words in her titles in the 1940s with works such as Pelagos, following her extended visit Hepworth made a series of sculptures named after ancient Greek sites. Hepworth and Ben Nicholson had been fascinated with Greece for many years and early works had been discussed in classical terms. She was conscious of their association with Greece and wrote to him from Athens, “I wish you were here. It just seems wrong to see it without you, for every time I look I think of the way you would see it”. With Torso III (Galatea) and other works in this series Hepworth developed a means of casting which allowed for her to make modifications in the bronze surface. She has said “I only learned to love bronze when I found that it was gentle and I could file it and carve it and chisel it.”

Hepworth's description and memoirs of her trip suggest that she was drawn both to the historical and cultural associations of Greece and to her own sensuous experience of the Greek landscape. The artist published a selection of the notes in her Greek sketchbook and much of her attention was devoted to the colours, forms and sensations of the places she visited. It has been suggested that these 'post-Greece landscapes' reflect the first expression of 'a humanist philosophy', which Hepworth had arrived at during her Greek trip. Her comments suggest that various aspects of her experience of Greece contributed to an elevation of mankind: “In Greece I noticed the wonderful stance of man. I thought of Greek philosophy, of the majesty of Greek tragedy, and of certain strength of the human mind which causes people to become bigger when you see them”.