From out of the shadows

BARBARA HEPWORTH was born into a sepia world before feminism was invented. As a would-be artist, she faced far greater hurdles than her male coevals and especially the sculptor Henry Moore, with whom she was compared throughout her life. However, she held on to her ambition, explaining herself in essays, manifestos and a propagandising A Pictorial Autobiography, which laid down boundaries for what future audiences could know or write about her. In middle age, she emerged into the limelight as an awkward pioneer in the history of modern art, whose signature pierced forms and expressive, dynamic public sculptures had found a new, global audience.

All this was achieved at some personal cost and by ferocious determination and control, both in her lifetime and posthumously. The measures that Hepworth took ensured that her concrete achievements remained to the fore; the familial and emotional were embargoed, together with her personal papers. She knew that