It’s staying home: UK raises £3.8 million to keep rare Barbara Hepworth sculpture

The UK has raised £3.8 million (approx. €4.4 million) to save a rare sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth for the nation,The Hepworth Wakefield art museum said on Tuesday.

Hepworth’s 1943 ‘Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red’ will enter the UK’s national collection and go on permanent public display at The Hepworth Wakefield, in her West Yorkshire hometown.

Born in 1903, Barbara Hepworth was one of the leading and pioneering figures of British Modernism throughout the first half of the 20th century.

Her ‘Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red’ “marks a breakthrough in Hepworth’s career,” The Hepworth Wakefield said in a statement.

She created the piece at the height of World War II after she settled with her family in St. Ives, Cornwall. She remained there until her death in 1975.

“It is one of only a handful of wooden carvings made by Hepworth during the 1940s, and one of the first major wood carvings she made using strings.”

She went on to produce a series of notable stringed and colourful sculptures.

English art collector Helen Sutherland first bought the piece directly from the artist in 1944. It remained privately owned and mostly shielded from public view ever since.

The artwork was most recently sold to a private collector at a Christie’s auction in March 2024 in London. But in November, the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport placed a temporary export bar on the sculpture, citing its “outstanding connection with our history and national life, its outstanding aesthetic importance and its outstanding significance” to the study of Hepworth’s work.

“Dame Barbara Hepworth was a phenomenal artistic genius,” Arts Minister Chris Bryant said in a statement at the time. “I hope a UK buyer can be found for this sculpture so the British public can continue to learn and engage with one our most important artists for generations to come.”

The Hepworth Wakefield and UK charity Art Fund launched a campaign in June to raise the £3.8 million necessary to buy the piece.

The campaign reached its target on Tuesday, ahead of its 27 August deadline.

The appeal resulted in 2,800 donations from individual members of the public, as well as several major grants, including £1.89 million from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and £750,000 from Art Fund.

“We think [Hepworth] would have been delighted that so many people have come together to enable her work to be part of a public art collection which can be experienced and enjoyed by so many”, said The Hepworth Wakefield interim director and CEO Olivia Colling.

The gallery will celebrate the sculpture’s acquisition with a dedicated exhibition, with details to be announced.