Dame Barbara Hepworth

Galerie Chalette, New York, where acquired by Thomas Baker Slick, Jr in 1959 and thence by descent to the present owner

New York, Galerie Chalette, Hepworth, October-November 1959, cat. no.27, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue;
San Antonio, McNay Art Museum, Tom Slick: International Art Collector, 10th June - 13th September 2009, illustrated pp.54-55 in the exhibition catalogue.

Emily Genauer, 'Zorach Inspired by Man, Hepworth by Material', New York Herald Tribune, 18th October 1959, referred to p.7 as Head;      Unsigned, 'Her Obsession', Newsweek, 26th October 1959, pp.62-63;
J.P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth, Lund Humphries, London, 1961, cat. no.251, illustrated;
Michael Shepherd, Barbara Hepworth, Methuen, London, 1963, p.40, pl.14;
J.P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth and the Mediterranean Spirit, Marmo, Milan, December 1964, p.62;
A.M. Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, Thames and Hudson, London, 1968 (revised edition 1987), illustrated p.134, pl.110;
Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens, Barbara Hepworth: Works in the Tate Gallery Collection and the Barbara Hepworth Museum St Ives, Tate Gallery Publishing, London, 1999, pp.226, 228.

The marble appears to be very slightly dirty. There are a few minor old scratches with very minor infilling. Otherwise the sculpture is in good overall condition. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Executed in 1959.

The late 1950s was a period of dramatically increasing international acclaim for Barbara Hepworth. In 1958, she had been made C.B.E. and received a major commission (Meridian) for State House in London. She became the senior figure in St Ives as Ben Nicholson left for Switzerland and in 1959 was awarded the Grand Prix at the Fifth Sao Paolo Bienal organised by the British Council. It was also a period of great activity with Hepworth working in multiple materials, producing sculpture intended to be cast in bronze for the first time and continuing to carve directly into wood and stone.

Exhibited at Galerie Chalette in 1959, Head (Icon) is clearly an abstract sculpture, and powerfully compares to her sculptures of the 1930s. Yet by calling the work a 'head', Hepworth tempts the viewer to look for some representation of a face in the markings on the surface. The incisions become signs of features and the piercing an eye. Furthermore, the use of white marble represents a connection with the past, putting the viewer in mind of classical Greece. Hepworth recognised the important relationship her work had with the Mediterranean in a discussion she had with J.P. Hodin, which he later recalled, 'We... spoke about the Mediterranean around which every idea, concept and form, art, myth and religion, philosophy and science of Europe was born, without which we could not exist even for an instant.' (Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens, Barbara Hepworth, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999, pp.226-8).

In an interview with Hodin in 1964, Hepworth listed Head (Icon) as one of her best loved marble sculptures. That year, she had presented the very comparable Pierced Form to the Tate Collection, a sculpture which she compared to Head (Icon) in a letter to Mary Chamot, assistant keeper at the Tate Gallery, 'As regards Pierced Form (Pentelicon) it is related formally I think with the earlier Pierced Hemisphere and I think related tactilely (sic) to the Heads 242 and 251 (Head (Icon))' (Ibid). It is testament to the art historical importance of the present sculpture that the sculptor valued it so highly as to name it as one of her favourite works, and recognise its similarities with a sculpture she had chosen to represent her work at her country's greatest national museum.

When Hepworth presented the sculpture to the Gallery, she rightly commented in a letter to Norman Reid, then Director of the Tate Gallery, 'I am one of the few people in the world who know how to speak through marble'. It was Hepworth's practice to carve marble in the open air, where she responded to the medium's 'radiance in the light, ...hardness, precision, and response to the sun', and then to present the final pristine sculptures on rugged wooden bases with knotted surfaces, as can be seen with the present work.

We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.