How much do you know about Barbara Hepworth beyond her sculptures? 

Her work has become some of the best-known British art of the 20th century, but less is known about her interests in theatre and music, her travel and her family life. Here are five things you might not know about Hepworth.

1. She was fascinated by Greece long before she ever visited

Hepworth’s connection with Greece began well before her first visit. In the 1920s, she worked with Greek marble, including Parian marble, and later drew on Greek words and references in her sculpture titles. Carvings such as Pelagos (1946), meaning ‘sea’ in Greek, Anthos (1946) or ‘flower’, and Eidos (1947), ‘shape’ or ‘form’, pre-date her first visit, reflecting an interest in Greek language and culture. 

Hepworth finally travelled to Greece in August 1954 with her friend and patron Margaret Gardiner. They visited Athens, Epidauros, Mycenae and Delphi on the mainland, as well as Crete and the Aegean islands of Rhodes, Cos, Patmos, Delos and Santorini. In her diary, Hepworth wrote of the journey: “I have waited 30 yrs to see Greece.” 

Soon after returning to St Ives, Hepworth received a large consignment of guarea wood from Nigeria. From this wood, she carved a series of sculptures inspired by the places and landscapes she had encountered, including Corinthos, Curved form (Delphi) and Oval sculpture (Delos), all completed in 1955.

2. She designed costumes and sets for theatre and opera

Sculpture wasn’t Hepworth’s only way of thinking about space, form and movement. She also brought her ideas into the theatre. 

In 1951, she designed the sets and costumes for Sophocles’ Electra at London’s Old Vic, directed by Michel Saint-Denis and starring Peggy Ashcroft. For the play, Hepworth also created Apollo, a metal sculpture that formed part of the stage set. 

A few years later, she worked with composer Michael Tippett on his opera The Midsummer Marriage, designing its sets and costumes for its first performances at the Royal Opera House in 1955. 

Her theatre work is particularly interesting in the context of her wider interest in movement. Hepworth was fascinated by the relationship between sculpture, dance and music, and these ideas continued to appear throughout her work. 

3. She had four children 

Hepworth had four children. Her eldest son, Paul, was born in 1929 during her marriage to fellow sculptor John Skeaping. In 1934, she had triplets – Rachel, Sarah and Simon – with the artist Ben Nicholson. 

When the family moved to Cornwall in 1939, life was demanding. During the war, Hepworth helped to run a nursery school, grew food in a small garden and cared for the children, often fitting her artistic work around domestic responsibilities. With sculpture materials scarce and little space to work, she made drawings and plaster sculptures, often working at night. 

Motherhood also influenced how Hepworth thought about sculpture. After the birth of the triplets, she felt her work had “changed direction”, describing the arrival of her children as the “only fresh influence” on her work at the time. She became increasingly interested in relationships between forms in space, including their size, texture, weight and the tensions between them. 

In February 1953, tragedy struck when Paul, aged 23, was killed in an RAF aircraft accident in Thailand, alongside his navigator, John Williamson. That year, Hepworth made works in his memory. The following year, she travelled to Greece with her close friend Margaret Gardiner. 

4. She turned a former cinema into her studio 

By the early 1960s, Hepworth’s sculptures were becoming increasingly ambitious in scale. Her studio at Trewyn could no longer accommodate everything she wanted to make. 

In 1961, she bought the Palais de Danse, a former cinema and dance hall directly opposite Trewyn Studio in St Ives. She transformed the building into a second working space, using it for large-scale commissions, bronze work and the storage and display of her sculptures. 

She used the Palais de Danse for major commissions including Winged Figure for John Lewis in London and Single Form, her monumental sculpture for the United Nations headquarters in New York. 

It gives a fascinating sense of how Hepworth’s practice evolved: the spaces in which she worked had to evolve with it. 

5. Her sculptures inspired music 

Hepworth had a lifelong interest in music. As a child, she excelled at the piano, and as an adult she continued to think about the relationship between music, movement and sculpture. 

One of her interesting musical friendships was with the composer Priaulx Rainier, whom she met in the late 1940s. Rainier became an important friend and, in 1950, stayed with Hepworth in St Ives while she was working on Contrapuntal Forms, her commission for the Festival of Britain. 

As Hepworth and her assistants carved the monumental stone sculpture, Rainier listened to the rhythms of their work and notated what she heard. The result was Rhythms of the Stones, a musical fragment notating the sounds of Hepworth and her assistants carving stone. 

For Hepworth, the connection between music and sculpture went both ways. She wrote about the relationship between listening to music, dancing and the physical rhythm of carving. Her sculpture titles also drew on musical forms, including Curved forms (Pavan) and Forms in movement (Galliard). 

From ancient Greek landscapes to theatre stages, family life and the sound of stone being carved, Hepworth’s work was shaped by a much wider world of influences than sculpture alone. These connections offer new ways of thinking about an artist whose work continues to feel both grounded in the world around her and remarkably open to interpretation.