Purchase, Italy
Meridian (BH 250) 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 19
60. When the building was demolished in 1992, the sculpture was sold and moved to the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens in Purchase, New York. The sculpture resembles a distorted spiral with ribbons of bronze forming triangular loops. Hepworth intended the fluid lines of the sculpture to contrast with the rigidity of the building's rectilinear architecture. The title of the work refers either to an imaginary line of longitude (like the Greenwich meridian), or to the highest point reached by the Sun. It was influenced by Tachism, a French style of abstract art, and it may have been inspired by a work titled 1953, August 11 (meridian) painted a few years before by Hepworth's former second husband, the artist Ben Nicholson. Earlier in her career, Hepworth preferred to work directly in wood and stone, but from the mid-1950s she started to work more indirectly in bronze using preparatory...
Listen to the audio guide for Meridian Free on WIP — starts by itself when you arrive, even with the screen off