{"id":356371,"date":"2025-08-19T08:47:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/356371\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T08:47:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T08:47:18","slug":"wakefield-gallery-reaches-3-8m-target-to-secure-hepworth-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/356371\/","title":{"rendered":"Wakefield gallery reaches \u00a33.8m target to secure Hepworth piece"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel Russell<\/p>\n

BBC News, Yorkshire<\/p>\n

\"BettyBetty Saunders<\/p>\n

Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue And Red by Barbara Hepworth<\/p>\n

An art gallery has successfully secured sufficient funds to buy a Dame Barbara Hepworth sculpture, after reaching the target of \u00a33.8m.<\/p>\n

Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue And Red will go on permanent public display at the Hepworth Wakefield after pre-empting its 27 August deadline to raise the funds.<\/p>\n

The gallery received more than 2,800 donations from the public, as well as \u00a31.89m from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a \u00a3750,000 grant from Art Fund.<\/p>\n

The 1943 work, which had been in private ownership, was placed under a temporary export bar to give a British museum the chance to acquire it after it was deemed too important to leave the UK.<\/p>\n

Olivia Colling, interim director and CEO at the Hepworth Wakefield, said Dame Barbara would be “delighted” so many people ensured the piece can be displayed in her home city.<\/p>\n

“Barbara Hepworth often talked about her need to be part of a community and its proactive development,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We are enormously grateful for the generosity people have shown in helping us to bring this extremely rare and important work to Wakefield.”<\/p>\n

The sculpture was carved during World War Two, when Dame Barbara lived in St Ives, Cornwall, with her young family.<\/p>\n

It is one of only a handful of wooden carvings made by the Wakefield-born artist during the 1940s, and one of the first wood carvings she made featuring strings.<\/p>\n

In private ownership since its creation and rarely seen in public, the sculpture was auctioned by Christie’s in 2024 for \u00a33.5m.<\/p>\n

The gallery has said it intends to lend the piece to other museums and galleries across the UK, “opening up access for people everywhere”.<\/p>\n

\"BownessBowness<\/p>\n

Wakefield-born Barbara Hepworth was a pioneer of abstract sculpture<\/p>\n

The appeal was backed by artists and creatives including Sir Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Jonathan Anderson, Richard Deacon, Katy Hessel, Veronica Ryan, Joanna Scanlan and Dame Rachel Whiteread.<\/p>\n

Jenny Waldman, director of Art Fund, said the piece was “endlessly fascinating to look at from all angles”.<\/p>\n

“Its a really special and significant work of art,” she said.<\/p>\n

“This is a wooden object, it’s painted white with a beautiful pale blue, perhaps reminiscent of Cornwall and the beautiful blues there, and it has coloured strings in the middle.”<\/p>\n

Ms Hessel, an art historian who supported the appeal, said Hepworth’s sculptures “really sum up the British landscape”.<\/p>\n

“This was during the war, there were scarce material available to her and she had to make do with what she had,” she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rachel Russell BBC News, Yorkshire Betty Saunders Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue And Red by Barbara…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-356371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115054565543749083","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}