Barbara Hepworth Quotes

42 Sourced Quotes

The naturalness of life... the sense of community is, I think, a very important factor in an artist's life.

Barbara Hepworth
I cannot write anything about landscape without writing about the human figure and the human spirit inhabiting the landscape, for me, the whole art sculpture is a fusion of these two element – the balance of sensation and the evocation of man in his universe. Every work in sculpture is either a figure I see, or a sensation I have, whether in Yorkshire, Cornwall or Greece, or the Mediterranean.

Barbara Hepworth
The United Nations is our conscience. If it succeeds it is our success. If it fails it is our failure.

Barbara Hepworth
Whenever I am embraced by land and seascape I draw ideas for new sculptures; new forms to touch and walk around, new people to embrace, with an exactitude of form that those without sight can hold and realize.... It is essentially practical and passionate.

Barbara Hepworth
A constructive work is an embodiment of freedom itself, and is unconsciously perceived, even by those who are consciously against it. The desire to live is the strongest universal emotion, it springs from the depths of our unconscious sensibility – and the desire to give life is our most potent, constructive, conscious expression of this intuition.

Barbara Hepworth
I have been deeply interested during the last ten years in the use of colour with form. I have applied oil colour – white, grey, and blues of different degrees of tone.... I have been very influenced by the natural colour and luminosity in stones and woods and the change in colour as light travels over the surface contours. When I pierced the material tight through a great change seemed to take place in the concavities from which direct light was excluded. From this experience my use of colour developed.

Barbara Hepworth
I've found opposition to my teaching because I said it's not the strength which does it, it's a rhythm. You don't need huge muscles great strength. In fact, if you have that and misuse it, you're going to damage the material. It's absurd. It's a rhythmical flow of an idea, whichever sex you are.

Barbara Hepworth
It is easy now to communicate with people through abstraction, and particularly so in sculpture. Since the whole body reacts to its presence, people become themselves a living part of the whole.

Barbara Hepworth
The Acropolis – the spaces between the columns – the depth of flutings to touch – the breadth, weight and volume – the magnificence of a single marble bole up-ended -. The passionate warm color of the marble and all-pervading philosophic proportion and space.

Barbara Hepworth
Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality – it resists and makes demands..

Barbara Hepworth
At no point do I wish to be in conflict with any man or masculine thought. It doesn't enter my consciousness. I think art is anonymous. It's not competitive with men. It's a complementary contribution. I've said that and I do believe it, that one does contribute to art and that's nothing to do with being male or female... I don't think a good work of art can just be said to be feminine or masculine.... art's either good or isn't.

Barbara Hepworth
Ascended Kynthos alone, the cave of Apollo – half-way magnificent and majestic. A pool with fine fig trees nearby full of giant (sacred?) toads – leaping and barking. Also green frogs.

Barbara Hepworth
Sculpture, to me, is primitive, religious, passionate, and magical.

Barbara Hepworth
Saw a magnificent Koros – tall, fierce and passionate bigger than life size – in the Museum. A heavenly work – the backs and buttocks in relation to the hip and waist – an inspiration. I thought the fragment of leg and calf (attached below the knee) was falsely attributed.

Barbara Hepworth
I'm involved in everything. I read just as I was in the thirties during the Spanish War and Franco and everything. And after all there's not a great deal of difference between the 'Monument to the Spanish War', a group of things one on top of the other, that I lost and 'The family of Man' [she made in 1970]. I mean I've always been involved. I was involved in industry in my home town. I was involved in the distress and the strikes. I wasn't marching but I was involved through my work.

Barbara Hepworth
[the 1960's began] with a feeling of tremendous liberation, because I at last had space and money and time to work on a much bigger scale.

Barbara Hepworth
Working in the abstract way seems to release one's personality and sharpen the perceptions so that in the observation of humanity or landscape it is the wholeness of inner intention which moves one so profoundly. The components fall into place and one is no longer aware of the detail except as the necessary significance of wholeness and unity.... a rhythm of form which has its roots in earth but reaches outwards towards the unknown experiences of the future. The thought underlying this form is, for me, the delicate balance the spirit of man maintains between his knowledge and the laws of the universe.

Barbara Hepworth