Barbara Hepworth: Google celebrates English artist and modernist sculptor with animated Doodle

Google celebrates English artist and modernist sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth with animated Doodle on August 25, 2020.

Who was Barbara Hepworth?

Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth DBE was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. She was an English artist and sculptor. Her work epitomizes Modernism and specifically modern sculpture. She was one of the few female artists of her generation to accomplish international fame. Alongside artists, for example, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who lived in St Ives during World War II.

Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth decided at 15 years old that she wanted to become a sculptor. Hepworth went to Wakefield Girls’ High School, where she was awarded music prizes at 12 years old and won a scholarship to study at the Leeds School of Art from 1920. It was there that she met her Yorkshireman, Henry Moore. They became companions and built up a friendly rivalry that kept going expertly for a long time and becomes leading figures in Modernism.

Read More: 36 Interesting Facts about British Sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth

Regardless of endeavoring to increase a situation in what was a male-dominated environment, Barbara Hepworth effectively won a county scholarship to go to the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London and studied there from 1921 until she was granted the diploma of the Royal College of Art in 1924.

Following her studies at the RCA, Barbara Hepworth went to Florence, Italy, in 1924 on a West Riding Travel Scholarship. Hepworth was additionally the runner-up for the Prix-de-Rome, which the sculptor John Skeaping won. After making a trip with him to Siena and Rome, Hepworth wedded Skeaping on 13 May 1925 in Florence.

Barbara Hepworth’s emphasis on abstract art thrived in the mid-1930s. She was the first to sculpt the penetrated figures that would get characteristic of her work. While her initial work joined classic elements, by the 1930s she had moved to completely abstract pieces, among the earliest such sculptures created in Britain.

In 1938, Barbara Hepworth wedded Ben Nicholson, who was an English painter of abstract compositions, landscape, and still-life following his divorce from his wife Winifred. In any case, they divorced in 1951 and she moved away from working just in stone or wood and started to work with bronze and clay. She regularly utilized her garden in St Ives, which she structured with her companion the composer Priaulx Rainier, to see her huge scope bronzes.

Her delicate, organic methodology was revolutionary, producing over 600 sculptures of elegance, refinement, and taste.

Barbara Hepworth was awarded the Grand Prix at the 1959 São Paulo Art Biennial, was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 for her contribution to British art. She likewise was awarded the Freedom of St Ives award in 1968 as an affirmation of her notable contributions to the town. She was awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Birmingham (1960), Leeds (1961), Exeter (1966), Oxford (1968), London (1970), and Manchester (1971).

Barbara Hepworth died on May 20, 1975, at 72 years old in a fire at the St. Ives studio where she was living.

Two museums are named after Barbara Hepworth and have huge collections of her work – the Barbara Hepworth Museum in St Ives, Cornwall, and The Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Her work can likewise be seen at numerous spots like Glebelands, Harlow, Essex, UK, The University of Liverpool, The University of Birmingham, The University of Southampton, Highfield Campus, St Catherine’s College, Oxford, Cardiff University School of Music, Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, West Yorkshire, Clare College, Cambridge to give some examples.

Google Doodle Celebrating Barbara Hepworth

On August 25, 2020, Google celebrates the life and work of English sculptor Barbara Hepworth with animated Doodle. To observe Hepworth’s career and art, Google made an animated Doodle in her respect on the anniversary of her 1939 move to St. Ives, a town on England’s southern coast, where she would become a leading figure in the colony of artists who lived there.

On 25 August 1939, Barbara Hepworth showed up in St. Ives, a town on England’s southern coast, where she set up her studio and lived for the rest of her career.

Google Doodle itself delineates Barbara Hepworth working diligently on her 1947 sculpture “Pendour,” which advantageously serves as the “oo” in “Google.” Truth be told, you can see the photograph that no uncertainty inspired the Google Doodle in a gallery over at Sculpture Nature.

The procedure demonstrated is classified as “direct carving,” which includes allowing the common to natural design and aspects of the material — be it stone, wood, or something different — straightforwardly impact the sculpture’s final shape. For her works and her contributions to the progression of art, Barbara Hepworth was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in 1965, only ten years before her demise.

As portrayed in the current Google Doodle artwork, Barbara Hepworth was one of the leading practitioners of ‘direct carving,’ a technique by which the sculpting procedure is affected by the qualities of the raw materials, as opposed to a preconceived model. Her work is as often as possible set apart by a sensitive, organic quality and a signature focus on the interaction between mass and void space.