NARRATOR:
Assembly with Sea Forms from 1972 is a collection of eight abstract forms in polished white marble, mounted on a metal base. It is one of the last major works by Barbara Hepworth.
Walk slowly around the group. As you do, notice how the relationship among the pieces and the sculpture as a whole shifts as you move. Hepworth carved each unit into the essence of a sea form, smoothing shapes and surfaces to convey the impact of wind, water and sand. She gave each a name—the tall rectangular shape, for instance, is called Sea King and the hollowed piece with the smaller form in front of it is Sea Form with Young. All units relate perfectly to each other in color and shape, and unite in perfect harmony.
Hepworth’s distinguished career began in the 1920s, when she was drawn to the abstract organic sculptures of Constantin Brancusi and Jean Arp. Like them, she sought to invest her works with an intense expressive vitality. She said:
HEPWORTH [ACTOR]:
“All the carvings were an effort to find a personal accord with the stones or wood which I was carving. Carving is not an optical sensation: it is a matter of physical relationship.”
NARRATOR:
Hepworth was plagued throughout her career by male critics who played down her significant accomplishments. Decades later she wrote:
HEPWORTH [ACTOR]:
“Apart from being a woman, it has not been easy, always having great bears breathing down one’s neck.”
NARRATOR:
Today, Hepworth is recognized one of the leading British sculptors of the 20th century. She died tragically in 1975, in a fire at her studio in St. Ives, in Cornwall.
Assembly of Sea Forms
1972
Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
On View
Hepworth possessed a remarkable ability to conjure organic form from inorganic materials and a uniquely keen sense of spatial relationships. Rounding contours, piercing forms, playing with scale and arrangement, her work explores the embodied relationship between object and observer. In this late sculpture, white marble veined with gray is transformed into a cast of sea-smoothed creatures. Hepworth gave each of them a name: the two tallest shapes are known as Sea Mother and Sea King; the row ranged before them, as Shell, Sea Form and Young, and Rolled Sea Form; and the two small figures, as Embryo and Sea Bird. Ranged on a low, circular pedestal, these form a composition that can be viewed from every angle, quietly inhabiting the onlooker’s space.
Details
- Artist Name: Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
- Title: Assembly of Sea Forms
- Date: 1972
- Medium: White marble, mounted on stainless steel base
- Dimensions: overall: 42-1/2 in. h. (108 cm); 72 in. diameter (182.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1974.12.1a-h.S
- Copyright: © Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Object Information
Barbara Hepworth - Conversations
- New York, Marlborough Gallery, 1974-03 to 1974-04
[on loan]
- Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, 1974-05-31 to 1975-01
Impossible Realities: Marcel Duchamp and the Surrealist Tradition
- Norton Simon Museum, 1991-07-04 to 1992-03-08
- Brommer, G., Discovering Art History, pp. 492-493
- Hubbard, G., Art at Auction, 1971, p. 71
- Marlborough Gallery, Barbara Hepworth-Conversations, 1974, no. 13 pp. 11, 38-39
- Reilly, Richard, San Diego Union, 1979, p. E-10
- Bowness, A., Barbara Hepworth: A Pictorial Autobiography, 1985, no. 347 p. 131
- Asher, Gerald, Gourmet Magazine, 1986, p. 62
- Elements and Principals of Design, 2000, p. 8
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1082 p. 370
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