Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE (January 10, 1903 – May 20, 1975, christened Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth) was a major British sculptor and artist of the twentieth century. Although not as renowned, she is generally considered as great a sculptor as her contemporary and friend Henry Moore.

Hepworth was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire and studied at the Leeds School of Art (where she met Moore) and the Royal College of Art. She later studied for a period in Italy.

One of her most prestigious works was Single Form (1961–1964), a memorial to the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, at the United Nations building in New York City.

Hepworth married the sculptor John Skeaping before becoming the painter Ben Nicholson's second wife in 1933. They divorced in 1951.

She was made a Dame in 1965, seven years before her death during a fire in her St Ives studio in Cornwall, aged seventy-two. The studio and her home now form the Barbara Hepworth Museum.

As well as at the Barbara Hepworth Museum, more of Hepworth's work will be on display at The Hepworth, a museum currently under construction in Wakefield. An opening in 2008 is anticipated. Her work may also be seen at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, West Yorkshire; Churchill College and New Hall, Cambridge; and on view in or attached to the John Lewis department store, Oxford Street (see picture); an office building in St Martin's Lane, near Covent Garden; and Kenwood House, all in London.

List of selected works