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Reconstruction

Barbara Hepworth1947

Arts Council Collection

Arts Council Collection
London, United Kingdom

Barbara Hepworth came to know the surgeon Norman Capener after one of her children had an operation on her thigh in 1943. At his invitation she witnessed a number of operations in Exeter and London, making sketches which she later used as the basis for oil and pencil drawings. The work of the surgical teams represented for her a harmonious interaction that she sought to convey in her abstract compositions. ‘I became completely absorbed by two things: first, the co-ordination between human beings all dedicated to the saving of a life, and the way that unity of idea and purpose dictated a perfection of concentration, movement and gesture, and secondly by the way this special grace induces a spontaneous space composition, an articulated and animated kind of abstract sculpture very close to what I had been seeking in my own work.’

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  • Title: Reconstruction
  • Creator: Barbara Hepworth
  • Date Created: 1947
  • Physical Dimensions: 34.3 x 46.4cm
  • Rights: Bowness, Hepworth Estate
  • Medium: Oil and pencil on board
Arts Council Collection

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