Wakefield gallery reaches £3.8m target to secure Hepworth piece

An art gallery has successfully secured sufficient funds to buy a Dame Barbara Hepworth sculpture, after reaching the target of £3.8m.

Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue And Red will go on permanent public display at the Hepworth Wakefield after pre-empting its 27 August deadline to raise the funds.

The gallery received more than 2,800 donations from the public, as well as £1.89m from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a £750,000 grant from Art Fund, alongside support from various other trusts and foundations.

Olivia Colling, interim director and CEO at the Hepworth Wakefield, said Dame Barbara would be “delighted” so many people ensured the piece can be displayed in her home town.

“Barbara Hepworth often talked about her need to be part of a community and its proactive development,” she said, adding: “We are enormously grateful for the generosity people have shown in helping us to bring this extremely rare and important work to Wakefield.”

The sculpture was carved during World War II, when Dame Barbara lived in St Ives, Cornwall, with her young family.

It is one of only a handful of wooden carvings made by the Wakefield-born artist during the 1940s, and one of the first wood carvings she made featuring strings.

The gallery has said it intends to lend the piece to other museums and galleries across the UK, “opening up access for people everywhere”.

If the fundraising target had not been met, the sculpture would have been sold to a private buyer and left the UK.

The appeal was backed by artists and creatives including Sir Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Jonathan Anderson, Richard Deacon, Katy Hessel, Veronica Ryan, Joanna Scanlan and Dame Rachel Whiteread.