Curiously at this time, her work became less figurative and more consistently abstract, influenced by Brancusi, Gabo, and Arp, as well as landscape forms. Putting holes in many of these carvings opened up internal spaces and curved convex or concave planes. Examples include Pelagos (1946), Monolith (Empyrean) (1953), and Pierced Form (Epidauros) (1960).
Read MoreHepworth and Nicholson separated in 1951. That year she began to work in bronze, casting carved plaster to make moulds. Bronze made outdoor works possible. Examples include The Family of Man (1970), Sphere with Inner Form (1963), and Single Form (Memorial) (1961—1962).
Hepworth died in a studio fire in Cornwall in 1975.
The carved dark-stained wooden work, Kneeling Figure (1932), is a good example of Hepworth's early interest in traditional subject matter, made before she visited modernist artist studios in Paris the following year and started to explore abstraction. Mother and Child (1934) blends mottled human forms with bone and landscape qualities, avoiding detail. Three decades on, Oval Form with Strings and Colour (1966), with its incorporation of stretched string, references Gabo, while its smooth elm egg shape alludes to Brancusi. The 21-foot-high commissioned United Nations bronze, Single Form (1961—1964), shows how adventurous Hepworth could be with scale, when much of her other work was intimate.
