Barbara Hepworth studied at Leeds College of Art and RCA. In 1924 she lived in Italy on a scholarship, studied the Italian technique of marble carving and married the sculptor, John Skeaping. After returning to London, she moved to Parkhill Road Studios, Hampstead in 1928, where her neighbours included Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson. Her marriage to Speaking was dissolved in 1933. In 1932, she and Nicholson visited the Paris studios of leading French artists and in 1933 she joined Abstraction-Création, an international Paris-based exhibiting society. After moving into an abstract phase she, like Moore, introduced the use of a hole into carved sculpture. She, Moore and several others were at this time at the forefront of the modern movement in England.

When war broke out she moved with Nicholson and their triplet children to Cornwall and did not sculpt again until 1943. From then on the Cornish sea and landscape was held in dialogue with her art. She also began employing strings to explore the tension or space within a sculpture. From 1951, she lived permanently at Trewyn Studios, St. Ives after the dissolution of her marriage. She received many commissions from home and abroad and a retrospective took place at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1952 and 1962 and at the Tate in 1968. She was made a DBE in 1965. After her tragic death in a fire her studio was opened as a public museum