Gemini (Two Forms)

Hepworth supplemented her education at the Royal College of Art (where she and sculptor Henry Moore were classmates) with travel and study in Europe. She joined the Abstraction-Création group in Paris, built friendships with Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso, and championed Surrealism and Constructivism in Britain. Ultimately, she forged a unique approach to the “abstract” as something both external and internal to sculpture––both a way to describe formal qualities and to evoke “the spiritual vitality or inner life which is the real sculpture.” The dual forms of Gemini, carved in slate, and the Single Form (Aloe), cast in bronze, demonstrate Hepworth’s nuanced feel for materials, for shape and surface luster, and for structural unity; each incorporates the “holed” piercing that was the artist’s signature.