Barbara Hepworth
Trophy (Flight)
1903 – 1975
Trophy (Flight)
1965
Plaster, painted light blue/light brown, on a grey painted wooden base
43.4 × 32.4 × 7 cm
Presented by the artist’s daughters, Rachel Kidd and Sarah Bowness, through the Trustees of the Barbara Hepworth Estate and the Art Fund
In the last fifteen years of her life, Hepworth made a series of highly polished bronzes, characterised by a sensuous, reflective, golden finish. They tend to be small-scale or table-size. The use of polished, unpatinated bronze was an aspect of the new richness in her work of this period, seen also in her use of colour and exotic stones. Trophy (Flight) was commissioned by Whitney Straight as an award recognising the achievement and status of British women in aviation, and cast in polished bronze.
The plaster is a solid carved form. There is an underlayer of gold paint, as found on Rock Form (Porthcurno) (1964). Although bronze cast was in polished bronze with a totally smooth finish, the surface of the plaster is highly worked with incisions and depth given through a range of blue, green and grey paint, recalling a stormy sky.
