When Barbara Hepworth died, the New York Times ran both a formal obituary and an "Appreciation," thus indicating the broad recognition she had received during her lifetime. The former called Hepworth "one of the world's foremost sculptors," while the latter praised her as a noted carver, "whose place in the annals of modern sculpture seems secure."

Born in the north of England, Hepworth discovered her passion for art as a young child and, in 1920, entered Leeds School of Art. Two years later she was admitted to the Royal College of Art in London, from which she was graduated in 1924. While on a postgraduate fellowship in Italy, Hepworth worked with master stonecarvers and met the British sculptor John Skeaping, whom she later married. Back in London, Hepworth was one of a small group of pioneering sculptors committed to exploring abstraction. She had her first solo exhibition in 1928 and, by the early 1930s, had developed her mature style: a sensuous kind of organic abstraction, sometimes incorporating strings, wires, colored paint, or holes piercing the sculpted form.

In 1931 Hepworth and Skeaping divorced; two years later she married the English avant-garde painter Ben Nicholson, with whom she lived and worked for the next two decades. During the 1950s Hepworth's reputation grew exponentially: she was represented in the Venice Biennale and won a first prize at the Biennial exhibition in São Paulo; she also had her first major retrospective exhibition and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (she was awarded the rank of Dame in 1965).