Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore were close companions as they worked together for many years after they met at Leeds School of Art. Their influence on post-modern art as well as each other was vast, and the subject of maternity captivated both. They both grasped the concept of using the material to the best of its ability to express its subject, however their representations still varied greatly.
Prior to the vast possibilities of post-modernism, that Moore and Hepworth began to engage with, The Vorticist movement entranced the world. However, The Vorticists were confined to cubism and futurism, where as Moore and Hepworth diverted from this and sought a more emotional ‘sentimentality of their own’ (1900 p268). However, neither of them entirely rejected the pre war anti-academic artists such as Epstein or Gaudier-Brzeska, who were clear influences to both Moore and Hepworth. Both Hepworth and Moore adopt similar stylistic qualities such as the recognition of influences from pre-classical, primitive art and non-western sources such as Egypt and Africa. This is evident through the use of basic geometric shapes that correlate to the human figure, such as the oval block…show more content… Hepworth shows this in the first image by the serene, tranquil expression on the mother’s face, as if she will always be there for her child, and in return, the child’s expression relates to hers, with his eyes shut at peace, he is at home in her arms, he knows he is safe there. Hepworth abandons the classical ideals of direct, anatomically correct representations of the human form and diverts to a more primitive, geometric stance, however, this causes the focal point of the sculpture to not be the aesthetics, but the sentimentality and emotion that emanates off of it. It ‘is above all an art of curves and dense fullness, of hollows, depths, and