Hepworth in Colour review – Cornish seascapes in immaculate sculptures

They say in St Ives that if you put your ear to a Barbara Hepworth sculpture you can hear the waves on Porthmeor beach. The Courtauld’s small survey homes in on one strand of her practice: her use of colour. Hepworth’s favourites turn out to be blue and white, the hues of breakers and rippling waters that surround the Cornish fishing town where her home and studio stand.

In the first, most beautiful room, rounded plaster forms the size of geodes sit on pedestals, their white exteriors cut open to reveal painted, deep-blue interiors. Red-painted strings run taut across those illusionistic depths and, for some viewers, suggest seaweed.

Around the sculptures hang Hepworth’s precise drawings—carefully calculated curves and radiating, intersecting lines that map out a lucid geometrical beauty. Still, the necessity of shifting attention from the sculptures back to the studies soon feels like a chore.

barbara hepworth, st ives, porthmeor beach, courtauld, cornish, seascapes, sculptures, colour, blue, white