Barbara Hepworth: Google Doodle celebrates influential English abstract sculptor

Barbara Hepworth, an influential English sculptor whose work remains preserved in St Ives, Cornwall, is being celebrated, 45 years after her death.

Hepworth’s work is the subject of a special Google Doodle going live on 25 August, which depicts her carving out one of her abstract works.

The artist, born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, produced some of the earliest abstract sculptures in England, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

She studied at the Leeds school of Art in the early 1920s before enrolling at the Royal College of Art.

Her earlier works featured classic, naturalistic elements, but over time moved towards more abstract shapes.

“Though concerned with form and abstraction, Hepworth’s art was primarily about relationships: not merely between two forms presented side-by-side, but between the human figure and the landscape, colour and texture, and most importantly between people at an individual and social level,” notes the Tate, which operates Hepworth’s museum and sculpture garden in St Ives.

Hepworth lived and worked in St Ives from 1949 to her death on 20 May 1975.

Among other achievements, the sculptor was awarded the first prize at the 1959 São Paulo Bienal.

She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire six years later, in 1965.