Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth and Printmaking

Barbara Hepworth is celebrated as one of Britain’s greatest modernist sculptors, yet some of the most intimate expressions of her artistic vision can be found not in stone or bronze, but on paper.

During the final decade of her career, Hepworth produced a relatively small but remarkable body of prints. These works offered her a new way to explore the ideas that had shaped her sculpture throughout her life: the relationship between form and space, balance and tension, movement and stillness, and the profound influence of the natural landscape.

For collectors, Hepworth’s prints offer something particularly special. They possess the distinctive visual language of one of Britain’s most important artists, while offering an opportunity to own an original work by Hepworth in a more intimate and accessible format.

From Sculpture to Print

Hepworth came to printmaking relatively late. She produced her first, an untitled lithograph, in 1958, but it was another decade before she returned seriously to the medium.

In 1966, Herbert Simon, manager of the Curwen Press, wrote to Hepworth proposing that she create a body of prints that would allow “people of modest means to own something by Barbara Hepworth”. The idea appealed to her, and in 1968 the distinguished lithographer Stanley Jones travelled to St Ives to work with the artist in the upper workshop at Trewyn Studio.

The collaboration resulted in 12 Lithographs by Barbara Hepworth, published in 1969. It was the beginning of a highly significant period of printmaking that would produce some of the most compelling works of her later career.

The suite is characterised by strong geometric forms, intersecting lines and carefully balanced areas of colour and space. Yet beneath this apparent simplicity lies the same sophisticated understanding of form that defines Hepworth’s sculpture.

Hepworth once described her drawings as “sculptures born in the guise of two dimensions”. The phrase could equally describe her prints.

A Sculptor Thinking on Paper

Hepworth never regarded printmaking simply as a means of reproducing her sculptures. Instead, it became another medium through which she could investigate sculptural ideas.

In her sculpture, the spaces cut through or contained within a form are as important as the material itself. The same principle appears in her prints, where areas of white or lightly coloured paper become active parts of the composition. A gap can feel as significant as a solid form; an apparently simple line can create the sensation of depth, movement or volume.

This is one of the most compelling aspects of Hepworth’s prints. They occupy a space between two and three dimensions. The paper is flat, yet the forms appear to open, overlap, rotate and move within it.

Lithography was particularly suited to this way of thinking. Through line, tone, texture and colour, Hepworth could suggest physical volume without actually creating it. Forms appear to exist in front of, behind or within one another, creating a visual equivalent of the spaces and openings found in her sculpture.

The result is not an illustration of sculpture, but sculpture translated into another language.

Opposing Forms

This exploration reached a particularly striking expression in Opposing Forms, a series of twelve screenprints produced in 1970.

The series developed from a group of drawings made in 1969–70, twelve of which are held by the British Museum. The screenprints were published in 1970 by Marlborough Fine Art and made and printed by Kelpra Press.

The title itself points towards one of the fundamental principles of Hepworth’s art: the interaction of contrasting forms. Throughout her career, she repeatedly explored the relationship between opposing shapes, creating compositions in which balance is achieved through tension.

In works such as Two Opposing Forms, geometric and curved elements appear to engage with one another across the picture surface. Neither form exists entirely in isolation; each derives something from its relationship with the other.

The surrounding space becomes equally important. Just as the openings and voids within Hepworth’s sculptures are integral to the objects themselves, the empty areas within her prints become active elements of the composition.

The distinction between positive and negative space begins to dissolve.

Colour, Light and Movement

Colour adds another dimension to Hepworth’s printmaking.

In Opposing Forms, areas of yellow, blue, brown and black are carefully balanced against one another, creating rhythm and movement across the paper. Her preparatory drawings reveal the extent to which Hepworth experimented with colour and composition before arriving at the final printed works.

These drawings are particularly revealing because they demonstrate that the process of making a print was itself part of Hepworth’s creative practice. They were not simply technical instructions for a printer. They allowed her to test, refine and reconsider relationships between shape, colour and space.

There is a remarkable sense of movement in the finished works. Forms seem to rotate, overlap and push against one another. Lines create direction, while circles and curved shapes appear to expand beyond their immediate boundaries.

Despite their apparent simplicity, the compositions are constantly active.

The Influence of Cornwall

Hepworth’s abstraction was never divorced from the natural world.

Her move to St Ives in the 1940s transformed her artistic outlook. The Cornish coastline, its extraordinary light, ancient stones and changing landscape became a constant source of inspiration.

The forms within her prints can consequently be read on several levels. A circle might be a purely abstract geometric element, but it can also suggest the sun, a natural cycle or the ancient stone monuments of the landscape. Curves can evoke the human body, waves, hills or the contours of carved stone.

This is part of the enduring appeal of Hepworth’s work: her abstraction feels both intellectually rigorous and deeply connected to the physical world.

A Rare Opportunity to Own Hepworth

Hepworth’s printmaking represents a relatively small but exceptionally important part of her artistic legacy.

12 Lithographs by Barbara Hepworth established a new dialogue between her sculpture and the printed image, while Opposing Forms developed that language further, exploring the dynamic relationships between individual shapes. These works form some of the most significant bodies of her late printmaking.

For collectors, this relative scarcity is part of their appeal. Hepworth’s prints are not merely decorative works bearing the name of a celebrated sculptor. They are original expressions of her artistic thinking, created at a particularly important moment in the later development of her practice and released in very small numbers, in most cases editions of just 60.

They also offer a different experience from her sculpture. Where a sculpture occupies physical space, a print creates the sensation of space through line, colour and form. Hepworth was able to transform volume into two dimensions and then, through the power of abstraction, make the paper appear to contain volume once again.

It is this quality that makes her prints so compelling.

They carry the unmistakable language of Hepworth: elegant, restrained and profoundly modern, yet rooted in landscape, nature and the physical experience of space.

For those who admire Hepworth’s sculpture, her prints offer a more intimate encounter with the artist’s imagination—and an opportunity to own an original work by one of the defining figures of twentieth-century British art.

At Hidden Gallery, we believe the most rewarding works of art are those that continue to reveal something new over time. Hepworth’s prints do exactly that. Their apparent simplicity draws the eye in; their subtle relationships between form, colour and space reward closer looking.

More than half a century after they were created, they remain remarkably fresh—and as relevant to contemporary interiors and collections as they were to the modernist world in which Hepworth created them.