Parent I, Parent II and Young Girl

Parent I, Parent II and Young Girl
‘The Family of Man’ series
1970
Bronze
Accepted in lieu of inheritance tax by HM Government, 1981 and 1993 © Bowness.  Photography Jerry Hardman-Jones

‘The Family of Man’ is a group of nine bronze sculptures, which can be shown individually, in small groups or all together. Each totemic sculpture represents a stage of human life: Parent I, Parent II and Young Girl are exhibited on the riverbank outside the gallery.

The bronzes are among Hepworth’s final works. Resembling piled stones but hinting at the human form, they somehow look at once both prehistoric and strikingly modern. Hepworth has said of these sculptures that she wanted them to appear as if they had ‘risen out of the ground’ like geological formations.