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Single Form (BH 325) is a monumental bronze sculpture by the British artist Barbara Hepworth. It is her largest work, and one of her most prominent public commissions, displayed since 1964 in a circular water feature that forms a traffic island at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, outside the United Nations Secretariat Building and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library. It is also the largest artwork cast by the Morris Singer foundry.
Copies of a smaller version, Single Form (Memorial) (BH 314), [1] are on public display outside the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., and in Battersea Park in London. The version in Battersea Park was granted a Grade II* listing in January 2016.
The sculpture is a largely flat, irregular shape, broadly oval, pierced near the top by a circular hole. The flat surfaces are pitted and scored with three intersecting lines – one broadly vertical, and two broadly horizontal – on each face, reflecting its casting in separate pieces. In 1970, the art critic Edwin Mullins suggested: "it is a torso, it is a profile with an eye, it is an expanse of space in which the sun rises, it is a blade, it is a human hand ... raised flat in a sign of authority, or of salute, or as a gesture of allegiance". In 1974 the art critic Dore Ashton suggested it is a "vision of the cosmos".
The work was commissioned by the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation as a memorial to the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld after his death in an air crash in Africa in 1961. Jacob Blaustein had served as the United States delegate to the United Nations. Hammarskjöld was a collector of Hepworth's works, including her 1937–38 sandalwood sculpture Single Form (BH 103) which he displayed in his United Nations office (now in the Dag Hammarskjöld Museum at Backåkra in Sweden). He had discussed with Hepworth the possibility of her being commissioned for a work at the United Nations Headquarters. She may have started work, expecting a commission, before Hammarskjöld's death: the commission was formally ratified by the United Nations in September 1962.
Hepworth had started work that led to the bronze in 1961. Single Form (Chûn Quoit) (BH 311) was cast in bronze in an edition of seven in 1961, with its shape marked with an inscribed circle. Her similar wood sculpture from 1961, Single Form (September) (BH 312), in figured walnut, has a circular depression on one face near the top. It is owned by the Tate Gallery and displayed at the Barbara Hepworth Museum in St Ives, Cornwall. Hepworth was working on the walnut sculpture when she received news of Hammarskjöld's death in September 1961, and named it after that month. Another related work is Hepworth's 1961 bronze Curved Form (Bryher II): a similar shape, pierced with a hole, with copper strings; an example was sold at auction at Christie's in 2013. [2]
She moved the depression, which became a hole, in the larger 10 feet (3.0 m) high Single Form (Memorial) (BH 314) bronze from 1961. Single Form (September) and a plaster model of Single Form (Memorial) were included in the Hepworth exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in May–June 1962. (The year before, Hepworth had completed Meridian , and was working on Maquette (Three Forms in Echelon) for the John Lewis store on Oxford Street, which became Winged Figure .) The first completed bronze of Single Form (Memorial) was included in the open air sculpture exhibition at Battersea Park in 1963. This first cast was shipped to the US in October 1963 and retained by the Blaustein family until 2005, when it was donated to Johns Hopkins University and displayed at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. A second cast was made in 1963, bought by London County Council for 6,000 guineas and installed at Battersea Park in 1964, where it remains on the south shore of the lake. It measures 3.12 by 2 by 0.25 metres (10.24 ft × 6.56 ft × 0.82 ft) .
Hepworth doubled the size of Single Form (Memorial) to create a full-size armature at the Palais de Danse annex to her studio in St Ives in early 1963, in wood covered with plaster. The full-size sculpture was cast in seven pieces and assembled at the Morris Singer foundry in London, the lines on the surface reflecting its casting. It measures 21 feet (6.4 m) high and weighs 5.5 tonnes (5.4 long tons; 6.1 short tons). It was erected in New York in May 1964, standing on a granite plinth near the edge of a circular pool of water, about 100 feet (30 m) in diameter, with a fountain, which had been built with a $50,000 gift from the children of the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands; it was unveiled on 11 June 1964.
Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the Second World War.
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. As of 2024, he remains the youngest person to have held the post, having been only 47 years old when he was appointed. He was a son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917.
The United Nations Art Collection is a collective group of artworks and historic objects donated as gifts to the United Nations by its member states, associations, or individuals. These artistic treasures and possessions, mostly in the form of “sculptures, paintings, tapestries and mosaics”, are representative “arts of nations” that are contained and exhibited within the confines of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, United States, and other duty stations, making the UN and its international territories a "fine small museum".
The Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Crash Site marks the place of the plane crash in which Dag Hammarskjöld, the second and then-sitting Secretary-General of the United Nations was killed on 17 September 1961, while on a mission to the Léopoldville Congo Republic. The site is located 10 km west of Ndola, in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia.
Two Figures is a bronze sculpture by the English sculptor Barbara Hepworth, which was cast in an edition of seven copies. One of these is located at Newfields, the campus that also houses the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. Other casts are at Southampton University, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, Commonwealth Park in Canberra Australia, and the Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone, Japan. The series were cast at the Morris Singer Foundry in London from 1968 onwards. Another cast of this work could also be found at the University of Birmingham Vale site, but is no longer present as of January 2, 2012.
Curved Form (Bryher) is a bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, modeled in 1961.
Sea Form (Atlantic) (BH 362) is a 1964 bronze sculpture by English artist Barbara Hepworth. It measures 204 cm × 107 cm × 73 cm (80 in × 42 in × 29 in).
Two Forms (Divided Circle) (BH 477) is a bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, designed in 1969. Six numbered copies were cast, plus one (0/6) retained by the sculptor. The sculpture's dimensions are 237 centimetres (93 in) by 234 centimetres (92 in) by 54 centimetres (21 in).
Three Forms is an abstract sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, completed in 1935.
Sphere with Inner Form is a bronze sculpture by English artist Barbara Hepworth, with six castings made in 1963 and two more 1965. It is sometimes interpreted as a child in a pregnant woman's womb, or as a metaphor for the creation of a sculpture.
Winged Figure is a 1963 sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth. One of Hepworth's best known works, it has been displayed in London since April 1963, on Holles Street near the junction with Oxford Street, mounted on the south-east side of the John Lewis department store. It is estimated that the sculpture is seen by approximately 200 million people each year.
Steinunn Þórarinsdóttir is an Icelandic sculptor. Her work uses androgynous human figures such as those in her most notable exhibits Borders and Horizons.
Meridian is a bronze sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth. It is an early example of her public commissions, commissioned for State House, a new 16-storey office block constructed at 66–71 High Holborn, London, in the early 1960s. The sculpture was made in 1958–59, and erected in 1960. When the building was demolished in 1992, the sculpture was sold and moved to the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens in Purchase, New York.
Contrapuntal Forms is a stone sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, one of her first public commissions, made in 1950–51 for the Festival of Britain and installed outside the Dome of Discovery on South Bank, London. It was one of two Hepworth commissions for the festival: the other was an abstract rotating sculpture, Turning Forms.
Turning Forms is a concrete sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, one of her first public commissions, made in 1950 for the Festival of Britain. It was one of two Hepworth commissions for the Festival: the other was a sculpture of abstract standing figures, Contrapuntal Forms, now in Harlow. Turning Forms has been sited at a school in St Albans since 1953. Both of Hepworth's sculptures were listed at Grade II in 1998.
Four-Square is a 4.3 metres (14 ft) high bronze sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth. It was cast in 1966 in an edition of 3+1. The four casts are displayed at the Barbara Hepworth Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Mayo Clinic.
Three Obliques (Walk In) is a 1968 sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. Three casts exist; two are in private collections and a third is displayed outside the Cardiff University School of Music in Cardiff, Wales. It is cast in bronze on a monumental scale.
Jacob Blaustein was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and diplomat who founded the American Oil Company with his father Louis Blaustein. Blaustein was an ardent supporter of human rights, the rights of Jewish people, and an advocate for multilateralism through the United Nations, serving as a United States delegate to the UN under five U.S. presidents.
The Palais de Danse is a former cinema, dance hall, ballet school and auction house in St Ives, Cornwall which was a studio for sculptor and artist Barbara Hepworth from 1961 until her death in 1975. After her death, the Palais was kept by her family until it was donated to Tate in 2015. In 2020, Historic England designated it a Grade II listed building.