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Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) was an English modernist sculptor and draughts-person working around and after the Second World War. She worked mainly in stone, wood, bronze, and clay to create her abstracted sculptures. She also experimented with lithograph printmaking and drew scenes of operating rooms. She was a major contributor to the art scene in St. Ives and was a figurehead in British Modern art.

Hepworth was born on January 10, 1903, in Wakefield, England. She attended the Wakefield Girls’ High School before continuing her education at Leeds School of Art. In 1921, she earned a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London and earned her diploma in 1924. She then travelled to Florence, Italy, to continue her studies, and from 1925 to 1926, Hepworth began learning the art of marble sculpture from Giovanni Ardini. She returned to London in 1926 with her husband, the sculptor John Skeaping, and began to exhibit their artworks in their flat.

In 1931, Hepworth divorced Skeaping after falling in love with abstract painter Ben Nicholson. When the Second World War broke out, Nicholson, Hepworth, and her son Paul moved to the artist’s colony in St. Ives. It was here that Hepworth would stay until her accidental death during a studio fire on May 20, 1975.

Hepworth’s early career focused on abstracted forms and was influenced by the art movements sweeping through Europe at the time. She began carving cutouts and negative spaces into her sculptures in 1931, before Henry Moore, one of her friendly rivals, began to do the same. After a trip to France in 1933, the artist also became involved with the Abstraction-Création movement and co-founded the Unit-One art movement with other artists and critics who were seeking to unite Surrealism and Abstraction.

After giving birth to triplets in 1934, Hepworth refused to give up her artistic practice, citing that being a woman artist and being a mother does not subtract from her artistic abilities, instead it enhances her inspiration. Between 1947  and 1949 she produced around 80 drawings of operating rooms after forming a friendship with surgeon Norman Capener. 

When her eldest son, Paul, died in 1953, Hepworth received a large shipment of Nigerian guarea hardwood from her friend Margaret Gardiner. This led to the creation of six sculptures inspired by her travels to Greece in 1954. The 1950s also saw Hepworth become more concerned with establishing a market for her work in the United States as Henry Moore had done. She was, however, somewhat unsuccessful due to a number of factors, including her own ambivalence towards self-promotion.

In 1960, Hepworth purchased the Palais de Danse to grow her studio space and work on more large-scale commissions. Lithography became a new medium for her to explore, and she created two suites of lithographs, one in 1969 and another in 1971.

Hepworth's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale in 1950, the São Paolo Biennial in 1959, and various museums/galleries across the United States. She was commissioned to create work for many governmental and cultural institutions, and she has received a number of awards for her artwork, including the Grand Prix at the 1959 São Paolo Biennial and the Freedom of St. Ives in 1968. In 1965, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Her home and studio in St. Ives were transformed into the Barbara Hepworth Museum and control was transferred to the Tate Gallery in 1980.