Hepworth in Colour

As a regular visitor to Barbara Hepworth’s St Ives studio museum, I was keen to see Hepworth in Colour., the Courtauld Gallery’s summer 2026 exhibition.

This is the first exhibition to explore colour in her sculptures and drawings, a less familiar aspect of the artist’s work. Her modernist sculptures are admired for their use of natural materials, purity of form and refined surfaces, so we tend to think first of pale stone, warm wood and dark bronze. Yet colour fascinated her throughout her life. She used vivid blues, yellows and reds inside carved hollows and across curved surfaces, often accompanied by fine lines of coloured string, to create spatial and optical effects.

Seen together, these works show that colour was never simply added decoration. A deep blue can make an opening appear to recede, perhaps suggesting the depths of the Cornish sea , while yellow seems to bring light from within. Strings stretch across the space, connecting one side to another and making tension visible. These shifts in depth, light and tension show colour and form working in harmony to change how each piece is seen and experienced.

Having come to jewellery through painting, the relationship between colour and form fascinates me. Hepworth’s drawings displayed alongside her sculptures reveal how naturally she moved between two and three dimensions, developing many of the same ideas through line, shape and colour. She described these complex, richly layered drawings as sculptures ‘in disguise’.

This exhibition helped me to see colour as something active within sculpture, capable of altering the depth, balance and presence of a form- and how a single decision can change the way an entire piece is experienced. It is a relationship I look forward to exploring further in my own work.

Images used with permission of barbarahepworth.org.uk

Hepworth in Colour - Courtauld Gallery-London