Barbara Hepworth: Strings is the first publication dedicated to the artist's stringed sculptures, paintings and drawings. In 1939, Hepworth (1903?1975) made her first sculpture threaded with strings. For the rest of her career, she intermittently combined string with works made from plaster, wood, metal and stone. These were some of her most personally distinctive artistic achievements. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the artist's death, Barbara Hepworth: Strings provides for the first time a comprehensive thematic account of string in the artist's work, exploring the different ways that she used it and the symbolism she invested it with. This publication includes a fully-illustrated catalogue of Piano Nobile's accompanying exhibition. It features essays by some of the leading specialists on Hepworth's work. The exhibition co-curator Michael Regan offers a personal response to the stringed sculptures and considers their affective quality. In his essay, Dr Stephen Feeke explores fresh perspectives and previously unpublished source materials relating to Hepworth and string. A further text by Eleanor Clayton, senior curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, gives a close reading of the most significant stringed works including the artist's celebrated commission for John Lewis's flagship store on Oxford Street. The book also includes a comprehensive, illustrated list of Hepworth's stringed sculptures. AUTHORS: Dr Stephen Feeke is an art historian with a specialism in sculpture. His PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, focused on Barbara Hepworth's bronzes and he has written and lectured on aspects of Hepworth's work in the UK and abroad. In 2022, he co-authored the exhibition catalogue which accompanied Barbara Hepworth in the Rijksmuseum Gardens. Other recent ventures include a significant public realm project for Paddington Square, London. He was previously a director at the New Art Centre, Roche Court, and a curator at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Michael Regan is an independent curator. He has over six decades of experience as an art curator and exhibitions organiser, having previously worked for the Victoria & Albert Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, the Arts Council of Great Britain, Canada House, London, The Cultural Institute, Kings College, London, the Royal College of General Practitioners, London, and The Lightbox, Woking. He is currently researching an exhibition entitled 'Matisse in Britain', which will take place in Sheffield and Bath in 2027/28. Eleanor Clayton is a curator and art historian with a specialist interest in British modernism. She is Head of Collection and Exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield, where she has been a curator since 2014. In 2021, she curated a major retrospective at The Hepworth Wakefield, Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life, which toured to Tate St Ives, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, and Towner Eastbourne. It was accompanied by her monograph of the same title. She was previously an assistant curator at Tate Britain and Tate Liverpool, and has curated exhibitions about Lee Miller, Ronald Moody, Bill Brandt and Henry Moore, among others. Luke Farey is the Research Director at Piano Nobile Gallery.
