Head (Ra)

Whenever it is exhibited, the seductive and mesmerising surface of Barbara Hepworth’s Head (Ra) immediately captures the viewer’s gaze. With its lustrous highly polished surface, this bronze sculpture is based on an earlier white marble prototype. Hepworth began producing these smaller-scale bronze works (cast in editions) in the last decades of her career, moving away from the monumental carved-stone works of her earlier practice. Much of Hepworth’s oeuvre was influenced by ancient Egyptian sculpture and iconography: in Egyptian mythology Ra is the god of the sun and is considered one of the most important of all the gods, represented with a large gold disc or orb above his head in hieroglyphs and sculptures. Like the Egyptian representations of Ra, Hepworth’s radiant sculpture appears to be illuminated from within.

Today acknowledged as one of the great sculptors of the twentieth century, Dame Barbara Hepworth, who was born in Yorkshire in 1903, forged a career and reputation in an arts world heavily dominated by men. With her talent recognised from a young age, she won a scholarship to the Leeds School of Art (where she met fellow sculptor Henry Moore) and later the Royal College of Art, London. Hepworth, with her partner Ben Nicholson, were key players in encouraging and developing modernism in Britain from the early 1930s.

Tansy Curtin, Curator, International Art pre–1980