Dame Barbara Hepworth
Small Mincarlo
Estimate
70,000 - 100,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Dame Barbara Hepworth
1903 - 1975
Small Mincarlo
brass and string
height (not including base): 17.5 cm. 7 in.
height (including base): 23 cm. 9 in.
Conceived and cast in 1971, the present work is from the edition of 3 + 0, plus 2 additional artist's casts.
This work will be included in the revised catalogue raisonné of Barbara Hepworth's sculpture being prepared by Dr. Sophie Bowness under the catalogue no. BH 523 B.
The present lot is offered together with a letter from the artist to the original owners, and the original authenticated photographic record that accompanied the work when first sold by Marlborough Fine Art.
Acquired via Marlborough Fine Art, London by Dr and Mrs Ralph. I. Fried, 18 April 1975, and thence by family descent to the present owner
Conceived and cast in 1971, Small Mincarlo is an outstanding iteration of Barbara Hepworth’s mature sculptural language. Composed of three folded brass discs held in tension by string. Titled after a small uninhabited island in the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago off the southwestern Cornish coast, Small Mincarlo is a meditation on the poetic possibilities of sculptural line, material and form. Belonging to the final edition that Hepworth produced with string, a material she began working with in 1939, the present work is a landmark not only of Hepworth’s oeuvre but of the history of Modern art.
Small Mincarlo illustrates Hepworth’s enduring fascination with negative space: the spiralled, golden strings delicately tracing and defining the void within the sphere suggested by the golden discs. The pierced apertures of each facet create an endless multiplicity of sightlines which, amplified by the reflectivity of the gold and spiralled string, evoke the artist’s lifelong exploration into formal presence and absence.
The rhythmic arrangement of string, the repetition of the circular form and the luminous qualities of the gold evoke a sense of cosmic harmony, inspired by the land, sea and sky of the Scillian coast. Intimate in scale, Small Mincarlo is a deeply personal iteration of the artist’s lifelong interrogation into the possibilities of sculptural form. As Hepworth noted: “I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour” (Barbara Hepworth, quoted in Sophie Bowness (ed.), op. cit., p. 144).
Small Mincarlo represents the culmination of Hepworth’s unwavering exploration into sculptural materials, evincing her appreciation of the heightened sense of preciousness and luminosity that gold affords. At once weightless and meticulously defined Small Mincarlo embodies Hepworth’s iconic sculptural language at its most assured, poised and sophisticated.
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