Barbara Hepworth was a pioneer of non-figurative sculpture. She was born in Wakefield and studied art in Leeds before attending the Royal College of Art in 1919.
Her first one-woman exhibition was put on in 1928. By 1934 her output was totally abstract and her studio became the centre of the British abstract movement. At the outbreak of war in 1939 she moved to St Ives in Cornwall with her husband, painter Ben Nicholson and their triplets.
Barbara Hepworth's volume of work was prodigious and in 1968 a major exhibition of her sculptures was held at the Tate Gallery. By the time she died in 1975 she was acknowledged by many as the greatest woman sculptor in the world.
