Realised only five years before her death, Barbara Hepworth’s Two Forms (Gemini) is an elegant example of the artist’s mature sculptural vocabulary at the height of her career. The piece was commissioned by the Carborundum Company, Niagara Falls, New York, in 1970, in an edition of 11 + 0, under a programme set up in 1961 to honour the achievements of its Abrasive Systems distributors by awarding them with an original sculpture. The company awarded five prizes to individuals and another five to the universities who nominated them. Previous sculptors commissioned to create a work for the prize-winners included Lynn Chadwick (1963) and Louise Nevelson (1967). The present work was awarded to Carnegie-Mellon University alongside a certificate signed by the artist, illustrated in figure 1.

Strong, paired geometric forms, such as those displayed in Two Forms (Gemini), began to feature more regularly in Hepworth’s sculptures of later decades. However, properties of the present work also crucially point to her output during the 1930s, in particular - the piercing of form.

Perhaps one of her greatest contributions to abstraction, the significance of carving or, in this case, casting apertures into a work did more than add an additional physical dimension to her sculptures, it ‘reveal[ed the sculpture’s] depth and its inner tension, and the space in relation to a human being’ (Hepworth quoted in exhibition catalogue, Barbara Hepworth: A Matter of Form, New York, Pace, 2018, p. 6). While other modernist artists such as Henry Moore and Naum Gabo also employed the technique of carving hollow openings in their sculptures, Hepworth’s experimentations were revolutionary from as early as 1931, when she first carved a hole into pink alabaster and created Pierced Form, later destroyed in the Second World War. Conceiving Two Forms (Gemini) then at the apex of her career not only points to the artist’s lifelong offering to modernism but reaffirms her artistic maturity in establishing the technique as such an integral part of her unique, sculptural vocabulary.

During the 1960s, Hepworth became focussed on exploring the subject of two forms in juxtaposition. She was fascinated by the intricate tension of subjects when displayed alongside each other, something she believed to represent ‘the tender relationship of one living thing beside another’ (“Statement by the Artist” in Barbara Hepworth Retrospective, 1927-54, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1954, p. 10). Indeed, such a tension is displayed in the present work whereby the hardness and see-through quality of the lead crystal both merges and defines the forms in dialogue alongside each other.

The title and its parenthesis, Two Forms (Gemini), too pays homage to this intricate relationship. Hepworth was heavily inspired by Greece during a trip with her friend and patron Margaret Gardiner in 1954. Many of her sculptures from the decade before her death, including numerous dual-form form pieces, bore names resembling the country and its ancient classical culture. In Greek mythology, Gemini was associated with the myth of Castor and Pollux, the children of Leda and Argonauts, and over time became associated with an image of twins. The parallel forms, albeit slightly distinct, and the material clarity of the lead crystal reflect this and reinforce a sense of spiritual symmetry within the sculpture.

Two Forms (Gemini) was created in Germany at the Barthman Crystal Fountry and is one of only two sculptures Hepworth created with the material. The other, Four Hemispheres, was also commissioned by The Carborundum Company and made in the same year. However, the present work’s two-form composition, pierced apertures and striking geometric planes are stronger and collectively represent some of the significant contributions Hepworth made to the development of modernist sculpture.