Under the Mediterranean sun of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the Maeght Foundation is honoring British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, a major figure in abstract art who remains largely unknown in France. The exhibition presents a rare and sublime opportunity to discover the work of an artist considered a queen of sculpture alongside her compatriot Henry Moore in Britain.

Opportunities to admire Hepworth's works in France are exceptionally rare, where her name remains largely unfamiliar to the public. However, across the English Channel, Barbara Hepworth is firmly established as a master of sculpture. In 2019, the Rodin Museum finally dedicated an important retrospective to her work. More than five years later, the Maeght Foundation brings the British artist back into the spotlight, and the choice seems obvious: it is indeed in the foundation's peaceful garden, in the shade of the pine grove, that one of the only Hepworth sculptures permanently displayed in France stands.

Beautifully orchestrated by Eleanor Clayton, head of collections and exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield in the United Kingdom, this retrospective highlights the major stages of the artist's career through a chronological journey featuring about a hundred works. The exhibition includes not only sculptures but also a significant number of sublime works on paper, on whose surfaces celestial and colorful forms seem to float.

Trained at the College of Art in Leeds (like Henry Moore) and at the Royal College in London, the Yorkshire-born sculptor quickly abandoned the figuration of her early work to explore the infinite possibilities of abstraction. Separated from her first husband, she traveled to Paris in the early 1930s, where her second husband, artist Ben Nicholson, lived. There she mingled with the cream of the avant-garde – Jean Arp, Constantin Brâncuși, Pablo Picasso – and joined the ranks of the Abstraction-Création group.

A practitioner of direct carving like Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth brought forth organic forms of mesmerizing sensuality from marble, wood, and bronze. The sculptor, a tiny woman with powerful gestures, did not hesitate to tackle monumental formats, as evidenced by the immense Single Form (1961-1964) that stands in United Nations Plaza in New York.

'Traveling through the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the forms,' remembered the artist, who was profoundly inspired by nature. Settled in Cornwall from 1939 to escape the Blitz, Hepworth was permanently influenced by this verdant environment of wild beauty. 'I used color and strings in many sculptures from this period. The color in the concavities plunged me into the depth of water, caves, or shadows deeper than the concavities themselves. The strings represented the tension I felt between myself, the sea, the wind, or the hills.'

The artist sculpted both voids and solids with equal mastery. Sometimes her works are adorned with metallic threads, evoking both the strings of an instrument and the staff of a musical score. Music, like movement, permeated her work. 'One is physically involved, and that's what sculpture is... It's rhythm, dance and everything else,' explained the artist who installed her studio in the former Palais de Danse in St Ives in 1961.

Close to nature, Hepworth was equally fascinated by the scientific advances of her time, particularly space exploration. This fascination finds an echo in her drawings populated with suns, moons, and other mysterious celestial bodies, whose titles sometimes refer to the Bible. A follower of Christian Science, a religious doctrine that emerged in the United States in the 19th century, the artist encouraged a spiritual reading of her work, even asserting that 'a sculpture should be an act of praise, a lasting expression of the divine spirit.'

In the superb setting of the Maeght Foundation, visitors can be completely captivated by the cosmic vibrations of Hepworth's work. The exhibition 'Barbara Hepworth. Art & Life' runs from June 28, 2025, to November 2, 2025, at the Maeght Foundation, located at 623 Chemin des Gardettes, 06570 Saint-Paul-de-Vence.