Hepworth, (Jocelyn) Barbara

English sculptor. She developed a distinctive abstract style, creating slender upright forms reminiscent of standing stones or totems; and round, hollowed forms with spaces bridged by wires or strings, as in Pelagos (1946; Tate Gallery, London). Her preferred medium was stone, but she also worked in concrete, wood, and aluminium, and many of her later works were in bronze.

Hepworth was an admirer of Henry Moore, Constantin Brancusi, and Hans Arp. She married first the sculptor John Skeaping and in 1933 the painter Ben Nicholson, whose influence encouraged her interest in abstract forms. In 1939 she moved to St Ives, Cornwall (where her studio is now a museum). She was made DBE in 1965.