Surgical Operation
Barbara Hepworth (Wakefield 1903 – St Ives 1975)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1948 - 1949
Materials
Pen and ink wash on paper
Measurements
470 x 546 x 15 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Mottisfont, Hampshire
NT 769730
Summary
Pen and ink drawing with wash on paper, Surgical Operation by Barbara Hepworth (Wakefield 1903 – St Ives 1975), 1946/49.
Full description
Hepworth was a key member of the group of artists who moved to St Ives in Cornwall at the start of World War II, and explored the possibilities of abstract art. During the 1940s she made a number of works based on her close observation of surgical operations. Hepworth said she was impressed by the extraordinary beauty of purpose and co-ordination of the surgeons and nurses, and observed how that unity…dictated a perfection of concentration, movement and gesture and.. induced a spontaneous space composition. The surgical team are not shown as individuals: their faces are made anonymous by surgical masks. Instead, they seem to become one being with many hands. There is a sense of speed in their movement, but also of great precision and focus, emphasised by Hepworth’s confident strokes of the pen.
Provenance
Presented by Derek Hill (1916 - 2000) through The National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund) in 1996
Credit line
Mottisfont Abbey,The Derek Hill Collection (presented to the National Trust through the National Art-Collections Fund in 1996)
Makers and roles
Barbara Hepworth (Wakefield 1903 – St Ives 1975), artist
Exhibition history
Barbara Hepworth: Hospital Drawings, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 2012 - 2013 Barbara Hepworth: Hospital Drawings, The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, 2012 - 2013
References
Barbara Hepworth Hospital Drawings (Nathaniel Hepburn), The Hepworth, Wakefield, 27 October 2012 - 3rd Feb 2013; Pallant House, Gallery, Chichester, 16 Feb 2012- 2nd June 2013; Mascalls Gallery, Kent, 14 June - 24th August 2013, p. 55