Penelope Curtis

Barbara Hepworth's career spanned five decades, from 1925 to 1975. Her style moved from figuration, through geometric and organic abstraction, to the internationally acclaimed grandeur of her large-scale, post-war work. Her best known sculpture is associated with the landscape around St. Ives in Cornwall: 'I used colour and strings in many of the carvings ... The colour plunged me into the depths of water, caves or shadows deeper than the carved concavities themselves. The strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills.'
This publication focuses on Hepworth's unique carvings. It reassesses her reputation in the light of attention recently paid to her contemporaries, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore and offers the opportunity to look afresh at a major British artist.… (plus d'informations)

Catalogue of exhibition in Tate London; Kröller-Müller, Otterlo; Arp Mseum Bahnhof Rolandseck. For Otterlo it is a kind of coming back home as the opening exhibition of the rebuild Rietveld Pavilion in 1963 was also a show of sculptures by Barbara. Kent's article about the devotion of Babara to Christian Science and the Anglican Church and how it affected (some of?) her sculptures is convincing but a little bit shocking for her 'modernist reputation'. Very nice and also convincing essay's about how Barbara used the media to present her sculptures in 'her chosen light'. Also nice 'history' about what was the apotheose of the exhibition the 'Guarea Wood-Carvings'. Good plates of exhibited works but it stays impossible to document 'the feeling' of materials and 3 D in 2D.… (plus d'informations)

Sculpture 1900-1945 provides a new critical analysis of the fascinating development of sculpture in Europe and America during this important period in art history. The most comprehensive concise history of modern sculpture available, this account puts sculpture back into relation with a range of other phenomena, encompassing many kinds of architects, sculptors, and painters, with widely differing kinds of practices.
Penelope Curtis takes Rodin as her point of departure and recurrent point of reference, building a story that necessarily begins in Paris, the major artistic center of the era, and evolves around responses to Rodin by sculptors in France, Germany, Britain, and America. She charts the key developments in the practice and reception of a wide variety of sculpture, from the avant-garde to public monuments. Covering all the major figures, including Duchamp, Le Corbusier, Dali, El Lissitzsky, Brancusi, Henry Moore, and Barbara Hepworth, Sculpture 1900-1945 focuses on specific themes in each chapter, ranging from the public place of sculpture, to the private arena, to the figurative ideal. Filling a gap in the literature, Sculpture 1900-1945 is the only critically up-to-date book on the subject.… (plus d'informations)