Art review: Barbara Hepworth
Tate Britain
Three Stars
She may not have had a major London show for 50 years, but we’ve hardly been deprived of Barbara Hepworth. Her sculptures are everywhere in Britain: in parks and gardens, in busy city thoroughfares, on beaches and in museum collections up and down the country.
That her work is so ubiquitous tells us how prolific she was. It also says a lot about how easily her sculptures fit into our lives. In a way, the contrived calm of an art gallery is the last place her sculptures should be experienced: enjoyment of the chunky, vaguely organic forms is hardly enhanced by close inspection. But to see such a breadth of work together in one place is to gain a sense of Hepworth’s journey from tentative sculptor of small-scale carvings to modernist titan making large-scale bronze sculptures for major public commissions. For that alone it’s worth a visit.