Ella fu all’avanguardia di molteplici movimenti artistici d’avanguardia e molteplici fonti di ispirazione che permearono la sua opera. Profondamente spirituale e intensamente attenta ai cambiamenti politici e tecnologici del suo tempo, la Hepworth esplorò fisicamente la scultura, consentendo così all’osservatore di riflettere e modificare la propria percezione e l’esperienza del mondo.
RETROSPETTIVA DI UNA AVANGUARDISTA
La Fondation Maeght è una delle poche istituzioni europee a possedere un’opera di questa grande artista, dunque questa esposizione è un’autentica opportunità per scoprire altri aspetti della sua pratica, come disegni e stampe, che illustrano il suo straordinario lavoro sviluppato attorno alla linea e al colore. Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life invita il visitatore in un viaggio che parte dall’intaglio modernista che lanciò la carriera di Hepworth negli anni Venti e Trenta, passando per le iconiche sculture a corda degli anni Quaranta e Cinquanta, fino alle successive commissioni su larga scala. Questa mostra svela come abbia integrato musica, danza, scienza, esplorazione spaziale, politica e religione, nonché eventi della sua vita personale, nelle sue opere, creando una visione unica dell’arte e della vita.
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Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life: 28 June – 2 November 2025 Fondation Maeght Saint-Paul-de-Vence. From June 28 to November 2, 2025, the Fondation Maeght presents a retrospective of the work of Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975), a British artist among the most important of the 20th century. She was at the forefront of multiple avant-garde art movements, with multiple sources of inspiration that infused her work.
Barbara Hepworth, Walnut (1964) Collezione Fondation Maeght (donazione dell’artista alla Fondazione nel 1967); foto: Claude Germain
ART & LIFE
Deeply spiritual and intensely attentive to the political and technological changes of her time, Hepworth physically explored sculpture, thereby enabling the viewer to both reflect on and alter their perceptions and experiences of the world. The Fondation Maeght is one of the few European institutions to own a work by this major artist. This exhibition is an opportunity to discover other facets of her practice, drawings and prints, demonstrating the remarkable work she developed around line and colour. Art & Life invites the visitor on a journey from the modernist carving that launched Hepworth’s career in the 1920s and 1930s, through the iconic strung sculptures of the 1940s and 1950s, to her later large-scale commissions. This exhibition reveals how she integrated music, dance, science, space exploration, politics and religion, as well as events in her personal life, into her work, creating a singular vision of art and life.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition begins with the artist’s origins, focusing on her childhood in Yorkshire, through archival material and photographs. Some of her earliest-known studies, sculptures, and paintings are displayed, reflecting her early exploration of movement and the human form. A proponent of direct carving, Hepworth combined an acute sensitivity to the organic materials of wood and stone with the development of a radical new abstract language of form. Also on display is Carving (1932), the earliest existing ‘‘pierced form’’ of Hepworth, which is rarely publicly exhibited, on special loan here from a private collection. Hepworth’s determination to break free from accepted tradition was enhanced by travelling to Paris in 1933 where she visited the studios of many of the leading European avant-garde artists including Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi and Pablo Picasso. Her development of abstraction in the 1930s is apparent in the boldly geometric Discs with Echelon (1935), made shortly after she gave birth to triplets, an event she felt invigorated her work towards a bolder language of geometric form.
Barbara Hepworth: Three Forms, 1969, lithography;
The Hepworth Wakefield Collection © Bowness, 2025
DRAWINGS, COLOURS AND SCULPTURE
One of the few examples in existence of Hepworth’s first coloured stringed sculptures in plaster, made during World War Two, will be shown alongside drawings she created during this period when sculptural materials were scarce. She described these drawings as ‘‘my sculptures born in the disguise of two dimensions.’’ In the 1940s and beyond, this sculptural language was infused with an evocation of landscape, shown here through painting, prints, textile design, and of course, sculpture, and with a focus on important landscapes that influenced her, from Cornwall to Greece. Hepworth’s broader interests (such as dance, politics, spirituality, and science) influenced her sculptures throughout her life. A section of the exhibition explores Hepworth’s passion for music and dance, and how she captured movement with gestural paintings and sculptures made in metal such as Involute II and Curved Form (Pavan). During the 1960s, Hepworth was a key cultural figure, creating ambitious sculptures in the public realm and experimenting with new materials. A section will reveal the influence of the decade of space exploration on Hepworth’s work, including sculptures such as Disc with Strings (Moon) (1969), made the year Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and several graphic works inspired by celestial bodies.
CONNECTION TO THE LAND AND TO SPIRITUALITY
The exhibition concludes with a celebratory overview of Barbara Hepworth’s work, showing the three sculptural forms she returned to repeatedly throughout her career in a variety of different materials, alongside her late print practice which brought a deft and playful use of colour to the fore. This includes works from Hepworth’s final years, showing her continuing connection to the land and to spirituality, with works that incorporate bold colours and luminescent surfaces while consistently seeking to express universal human experiences through abstract form. After the exhibition of contemporary artist Hélène Delprat in spring 2025, the Maeght Foundation is continuing its role of bringing major modern artists back to the spotlight, as it did with Jean Paul Riopelle in 2023.
ABOUT ELEANOR CLAYTON, INVITED CURATOR
Eleanor Clayton is Head of Collection & Exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield (THW). Following her MA in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art and research posts at the National Portrait Gallery and National Trust, she was Assistant Curator at Tate (2008–14). Since joining THW as Curator in 2014, Clayton has curated major exhibitions of British Modern art including Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain (2018), Bill Brandt / Henry Moore (2020), and Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life (2021), alongside solo shows of contemporary artists such as Phyllida Barlow (2016), Viviane Sassen (2018), Jadé Fadojutimi (2022) and Hurvin Anderson (2023).
BARBARA HEPWORTH
She has published widely on British Modernism including on British Surrealism (Lund Humphries, 2018), Henry Moore (Yale University Press, 2020) and the monograph Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life (Thames & Hudson, 2021), and has written on contemporary art for Frieze, Tate Etc., and Art Monthly, among others. «Barbara Hepworth is one of the most important artists of the 20th century, with a unique artistic vision that demands to be looked at in-depth. This exhibition will shine a light on Hepworth’s wide-ranging interests and how they infused her art practice. Deeply spiritual and passionately engaged with political, social and technological debates in the 20th century, Hepworth was obsessed with how the physical encounter with sculpture could impact the viewer and alter their perception of the world». (Eleanor Clayton, Curator).
Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence (France)
INFO
Barbara Hepworth
Art & Life
28 June – 2 November 2025
Fondation Maeght
623, Chemin des Gardettes
06570 Saint-Paul-de-Vence
France
@fondationmaeght
