Passionate as she was about carving, 'Curved Forms (Pavan), Version II' is an unusual and singular work of sculpture in Hepworth’s oeuvre. Averse to the concept of modeling, Hepworth preferred the resistance of stone to the carver’s hand. But in 1956, she developed a new sculptural method that allowed her to expand her artistic vocabulary beyond the carving of stone or wood—it is this method that she employed to create the present work. She constructed an aluminum armature and then cast it by coating it in plaster, a process that she compared to “covering […] bones with skin and muscles.” After composing the body of the work in this way, she proceeded to carve the hardened plaster surface; the result of this intimate dialectical relationship between artist and sculpture is a series of three-dimensional, pale gray ovoids that weave in and out of one another, incarnating a complex biological form. The sculpted plaster presents a monochromatic surface that is rough in texture, yet which holds the piece together in its splendid grace, suspended with perfect balance as if resistant to gravity. In contrast to Hepworth’s smooth stone works and her customary palette of darker grisaille hues, 'Curved Forms (Pavan), Version II' urges us into a tranquil space of contradiction, in which the harmony and agility of the work are counterbalanced by the violence of its physicality. The sculpture emanates vitality, a quality that the artist defined as the “spiritual inner life” of a sculpture. The work will be listed in the revised edition of the catalogue raisonné Barbara Hepworth, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture in preparation by Dr. Sophie Bowness, under no. BH 210.
