Barbara Hepworth, Winged Figure - Brass (Project for Sculpture)

Conveying the energy and spirit of a first thought, this work illustrates the potential of drawing as an immediately responsive medium. Rather than a blueprint for a later sculptural work, the drawing is exploratory and spontaneous, acting as a space in which to think; a parallel work rather than a preparatory one. The idea was later developed into the sculpture ‘Winged Figure I’ (1957), which was then enlarged for a commission from the John Lewis department store in 1961. Hepworth had been asked to express ‘the idea of common ownership and common interests in a partnership of thousands of workers’, and this lyrical idea was developed into the nineteen-foot-tall ‘Winged Figure’ (1961–63), still to be found on the exterior wall of their store on Oxford Street, London.