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Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 Four-Square (Four Circles), 1966 Signed, dated, numbered and stamped with foundry mark on base 'Barbara Hepworth 1966. 2/7. Morris Singer Founders London Cire Perdue' Bronze with brown and green patina. Conceived and cast in 1966 in an edition of 7 plus 1 artist's proof at the Morris Singer Foundry, London. 23 5/8 x 14 1/8 x 11 3/4 in, 60 x 36 x 30 cm Provenance Gimpel-Weitzenhoffer, New York Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above May 1969) Literature A. Bowness, ed., The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-1969, London, 1971, p.43, no.428 (another cast illus.) Moore's most influential and enduring artistic relationship was with fellow sculptor Barbara Hepworth. The two met early in their careers and forged a new language of modern sculpture, creating hugely important works in parallel with one another. While both artists retained a common vocabulary of form and held onto a modernism derived from the English landscape, each created a highly individual and distinct oeuvre, with Moore focusing largely on the figure and Hepworth on pure abstraction. Four-Square (Four Circles) is a supreme example of Hepworth's mature work. It is one of three maquettes created by Hepworth for Four-Square (Walk Through), (Barbara Hepworth Museum, St Ives; Churchill College, Cambridge and Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena). Although on a much smaller scale, Four-Square (Four Circles) has all the gravitas that its walk-through counterpart is lauded for. Hepworth described how she 'wanted to involve people, make them reach the surfaces and the size, finding out which spiral goes which way, realising the differences between the parts' in Four-Square (Walk Through). Physicality was integral to Hepworth's practice and her works are born from an understanding of the plasticity of space. In the 1960s she explored this through the relationship between circles and rectangles. In Four-Square (Four Circles) Hepworth's mastery of abstraction is a constant balancing act between space and mass, with every position and angle showing a different side to the co-existing shapes