drawing
- Museum number
- 2008,7081.5
- Description
-
Winged Figure - Brass (Project for Sculpture): geometric shape in the form of open wings with criss-crossing at centre. 1957
Ink on paper
- Production date
- 1957
- Dimensions
-
Height: 369 millimetres
-
Width: 257 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- On backboard of original mount Hepworth has written: 'Barbara Hepworth /"project for sculpture - winged figure (brass)" /1957/ ink on paper/ £28'
See Unpublished Barbara Hepworth Drawings and Paintings catalogue, no.351, and Alan Wilkinson, 'The drawings of Barbara Hepworth' 2015, p.118.
Label text from 2016-18, Sep-Jan touring exhibition, 'Lines of Thought'
Conveying the energy and spirit of a first thought, this work illustrates the potential of drawing as an immediately responsive medium. Rather than a blueprint for a later sculptural work, the drawing is exploratory and spontaneous, acting as a space in which to think; a parallel work rather than a preparatory one. The idea was later developed into the sculpture Winged Figure I (1957), which was then enlarged for a commission from the John Lewis department store in 1961. Hepworth had been asked to express 'the idea of common ownership and common interests in a partnership of thousands of workers', and this lyrical idea was developed into the nineteen-foot-tall Winged Figure (1961-63), still to be found on the exterior wall of their store on Oxford Street, London.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited
Year?Dusseldorf, British Council
1994-5 Liverpool, Tate, Barbara Hepworth retrospective (112)
2008-9 Sept.-Jan BM, British Sculptors' Drawings, no cat.
2016 3 Sep - 6 Nov, Poole Museum, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 14
2017 1 Jan - 25 Feb, The Brynmor Jones Library Art Gallery, University of Hull, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 14
2017 12 Mar - 5 May, Ulster Museum, Belfast, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 14
2017 May - Sep, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 14
2017-2018 Oct - Jan, RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 14
- Acquisition date
- 2008
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2008,7081.5
