About the Art:
Figure-(Nanjizal)
1958
Yew on oakwood base
246.9 x 45.7 x 33 cm
Tate Collection
Hepworth’s figures became increasingly more and more abstract. Her sculptures echo the natural world with the smooth, rounded, rolling forms. She employed the direct carving technique in which the initial carving produces the final form. Figure-(Nanjizal)i s an abstract carving representation of a standing human figure. Nanjizal is the name of a cove near St Ives, with striking arched cliff formations. This work has melded the standing human figure form and the contours of the cliffs and beach at Nanjizal close to where Hepworth lived. She described the sculpture as a representation of “my sensations within myself”
About the Artist:
Barbara Hepworth (English, b. 1903) was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire. She was an English sculptor mainly carving out of wood and stone. Her larger works can be seen outside in bronze. Hepworth studied at Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art in the 1920s. She took inspiration form the landscape around her in her homestead of England. The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, Cornwall was her home and studio for 26 years and is now a museum left exactly as it was down to her unfinished works.