The Hole Story
As early as the 1930s, sculptor Barbara Hepworth innovated the flow of space through form as a dialogue between volume and void.
The Pierced Form is a strange term for the lovely curves in many of the rounded sculptures which surround negative space, in the form of a hole, as developed in Barbara Hepworth’s transitional works. Yet it emphasises the revolutionary nature of her exploration of ‘space contained within form’ in this manner. For western art, it was a pioneering development which influenced her contemporary Henry Moore as well as future generations of sculptors.
“The holes I make depend on what I want to see… the depth, the thickness, the curvatures, the arc, the swoop, the spiral.” — Barbara Hepworth
Hepworth was born in Wakefield, the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1903. Her father was a civil engineer, and she would accompany him in his travels around the countryside. She proved a talented artist, attended art school in Leeds (along with Henry Moore) and then won a county scholarship to study at the Royal Academy London. She was runner up to the Prix-de-Rome, won by John Skeaping whom she married while travelling in Italy in 1925. They visited Siena, Florence, Rome, and she learnt how to carve marble from master carver Giovanni Ardini.
