- Title
- Bridegroom
- Date Made
- 1970
- Medium
- Bronze
- Dimensions
- Height: 102 in. (259.08 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2008.230.2a-d
- Collecting Area
- Modern Art
- Curatorial Notes
The Bridegroom is composed of four stacked cuboid volumes, two of which feature see-through voids or hollowed-out sections. It was originally conceived as part of Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man suite—one of her last sculptural ensembles—alongside eight other full-length bronze sculptures. Hepworth initially intended these works to be exhibited together on a slope, with the sculptures ascending in size and complexity from Young Girl onwards, roughly following the hill’s incline.
Although the titles of the sculptures in the suite mostly refer to stages of life or societal roles, Hepworth avoids using even vaguely identifiable, symbolic forms and associations corresponding to such categories. All of the sculptures in The Family of Man address variations on uprightness as a sculptural and existential condition), and, except for one, blur the boundaries between inside and outside by integrating voids and thus the surrounding environment—a practice Hepworth has explored since 1931. Around the same time she began using pierced volumes, Hepworth wrote that “pure abstraction” was the best possible means of representing “true reality;” with The Bridegroom (as with the rest of The Family of Man ensemble), she demonstrates this ethos by liberating archetypes from representational clichés.