Hepworth piece to go on display after £3.8m raised

An art gallery has successfully secured sufficient funds to buy a Dame Barbara Hepworth sculpture, after reaching the target of £3.8m.

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.

The gallery received more than 2,800 donations from the public, as well as £1.89m from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a £750,000 grant from Art Fund.

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.

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.

"Barbara Hepworth often talked about her need to be part of a community and its proactive development," she said.

"We are enormously grateful for the generosity people have shown in helping us to bring this extremely rare and important work to Wakefield."

The sculpture was carved during World War Two, when Dame Barbara lived in St Ives, Cornwall, with her young family.

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.

In private ownership since its creation and rarely seen in public, the sculpture was auctioned by Christie's in 2024 for £3.5m.

The gallery has said it intends to lend the piece to other museums and galleries across the UK, "opening up access for people everywhere".

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.

Jenny Waldman, director of Art Fund, said the piece was "endlessly fascinating to look at from all angles".

"Its a really special and significant work of art," she said.

"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."

Ms Hessel, an art historian who supported the appeal, said Hepworth's sculptures "really sum up the British landscape".

"This was during the war, there were scarce material available to her and she had to make do with what she had," she said.