As a sculptor and artist, Barbara Hepworth was a visionary. “She was the first modernist artist to “pierce” the sculptural form, and to begin sculpting with space as well as with matter,” says Lesley Harding, artistic director at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

“History has long attributed that invention to Henry Moore, but it was Hepworth’s discovery in the early 1930s and it was incredibly influential. It started to change the way sculptors thought about light and space in their work and unlocked the idea that absence can be filled with meaning and a spiritual charge.”

Yet, despite her influence within art circles, Hepworth’s work is not as well-known as it should be in Australia. Next month, though, that will change.

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From November 5 to March 13 next year, Barbara Hepworth: In Equilibrium will show at Heide; it will be the first time a comprehensive collection of her work has been seen in Australia. The survey offers visitors the chance to see works from across the artist’s entire career, from 1932 up until 1973.

“In the early 1930s she met her second husband Ben Nicholson, and they visited the studios of Picasso, Arp, Brancusi and Mondrian – a number of European artists who were at the forefront in advancing abstraction as an accessible and shared artistic language that sought to describe the essence of things,” says Harding. “There was a real shift in Hepworth’s work – fairly quickly into her career, and she began using symbolic forms that represented her observations of nature and offered a sense of order and unity.”

The exhibition at Heide is a survey of 40 works that cover four decades of artistic development, including the earliest surviving pierced sculpture, Figure from 1933, which demonstrates Hepworth’s famed use of space. Later works like Orpheus (Maquette 2) Version II from 1959 show what Harding refers to as a “rearticulation” of space, with an intricate arrangement of strings across the sculptural void, while 1947’s Eidos balances the heaviness of the sculptural form with the lightness of colour.

“There’s a reason why we called the exhibition In Equilibrium,” says Harding. “There are tensions in Hepworth’s sculptures, but the successful artwork to her mind has these tensions in careful counterpoise.”

Gathering influences from the Bauhaus school and Russian constructivism, Hepworth displays a sculptural style that is abstract, but is also studded with identifiable meaning. Among the free-form shapes, you’ll find references to the landscape and familial relationships, as well the human relationship to nature and the world at large.

“Constructivism was very much about art being non-elitist and integrated into everyday life, using geometry as a readily identifiable, relatable language,” says Harding. “She never really lost sight of that need to use forms and symbols that subconsciously, historically and even politically made a lot of sense.”

In showcasing Hepworth to the Australian public for the first time, Harding is hopeful that people will finally gain an appreciation for her significant contribution.

“For us at Heide it’s about shining a light on a woman artist who we don’t believe has had the recognition or acknowledgment that they deserve,” says Harding. “And, at the end of the day, it’s an exhibition that deals with universal and timeless themes.”

For more information about about Heide Museum of Modern Art here

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