Pierced Hemisphere I

Pierced Hemisphere I
1937
Marble
35 x 38 x 38 cm
Presented by Mr H. R. Hepworth Esq., 1940 © Bowness. Photography Jerry Hardman-Jones

This work was made in Hepworth’s London studio, a few years before she moved to St Ives. In the early 1930s she had first ‘pierced’ the forms of her sculpture in a purely abstract way, although she would later write that these works also had a connection with nature.

In her 1970 autobiography she explained: ‘The closed form, such as the oval, spherical or pierced form… translates for me the association and meaning of gesture in landscape’.

Hepworth had learnt to carve marble in Italy in 1925–6 while in Rome with John Skeaping.