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In 1934 Barbara Hepworth's abstraction

based on the human figure gave way to an art of pure form. With such works as Three Forms she reduced her sculpture

to the most simple shapes and eradicated almost all colour. She said later that she was 'absorbed in the relationships in space, in size and texture and weight,

as well as the tensions between forms'. While the three elements are slightly imperfect in shape, their sizes and the spaces between them are precisely proportional to each other. This reflects her concern with the craft of hand-carving and with harmonious arrangement

of form.

In retrospect, Hepworth placed the tripartite works immediately after the watershed in her sculpture caused by the birth of her triplets on 3 October 1934. In 1952, she recalled that her works had become 'more formal and all traces of naturalism had disappeared, and for some years I was absorbed in the relationships in space, in size and texture and weight, as well as in the tensions between the forms'. Perceiving the continuity with her subsequent work, she added an anthropomorphic reading: 'This formality initiated the exploration with which I have been preoccupied continuously since then, and in which I hope to discover some absolute essence in sculptural terms giving the quality of human relationships' (Read 1952, section 3). This was further qualified by the statement that 'the only fresh influence had been the arrival of the children' (ibid.). Ten years earlier, she had told E.H. Ramsden that Two Forms and Spherewas the first work made after their birth (letter to E.H. Ramsden, 4 April 1943, TGA 9310); this seems to have been implied for each of the tripartite works, including Three Forms, 1935 (Tate Gallery Report 1964-5, 1966, p.39).

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All three of these works display the concern with 'relationships in space, in size and texture and weight'. The rectangular bases define the relations between the three elements. The location of these was necessarily triangular, as Hepworth avoided a purely linear option, and the variations in size laid open potentially complex interrelations. In each case, a pair of forms - which in both Tate works included the largest - was ranged to the left and balanced by pushing the third far out (as if on a fulcrum) and activating the intervening space. The relative equality between the elements in Three Forms, 1935, means that this space is less exaggerated than in the related works, but, even so, the sphere is distinctly isolated.

The irregularity of the elements in each of these tripartite works was highlighted by the inclusion of a sphere. It acts as a compositional measure, matched against angular forms in Two Forms and Sphereand against ovals in Three Forms (Carving in Grey Alabaster)and Three Forms, 1935. It also sets up the proportional relationship with its more irregular fellows. The diameter of the sphere in Three Forms, 1935 is 120 mm (4 3/4 in.). This is the same as the depth of both the medium size element (85 x 180 x 120 mm; 3 3/8 x 7 1/8 x 4 3/4 in.) and the larger oval (180 x 255 x 120 mm; 7 1/16 x 10 x 4 3/4 in.); so that each is equivalent in this single dimension (in depth), variety being achieved in the other dimensions. Even there, the height of the large oval is equivalent to the length of the central element. Although the base has been replaced, the present spacing follows the original and is similarly regulated. This may be seen from the location of the largest element which is as far from the front of the base as the sphere is from the back (208 mm; 8 3/16 in.) - ensuring the open space on the right - and its distance from the right edge is equivalent to the length of the middle element (180 mm; 7 1/8 in.). This precision must be seen in the light of a significant adjustment - presumably made by Hepworth herself - to the position of the largest element: holes in the original base indicate that it was relocated about 10 mm (3/8 in.) further back. This alteration must have been of critical importance as it required drilling very close to the original holes and risked leaving the plugged holes visible. Shallow divots were taken out of the marble around the new holes in order to bed the element into the base; the same method has been used to locate the other two solids. Such 'spatial disposition' encouraged Frankfort to stress the role of the base in this group of works as 'by no means an accessory, but, on the contrary an essential part of the carving' ('New Works by Barbara Hepworth', Axis, no.3, July 1935, p.16).

Among the members of Abstraction Creation, Hepworth's contributions of carvings contrasted with the enclosure of space by plane and line which typified the international constructivism of Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, Alexander Calder and Katarzyna Kobro. In this respect, Hepworth maintained a latent relation to the techniques of Brancusi and (to a lesser extent) Arp, as well as to the direct carving ideals of the 1920s. The shift to abstraction expressed in her work, and that of Henry Moore, raised the question of reconciling a craft heritage with new forms. A.M. Hammacher has alighted upon this disparity exposed around 1936-7, commenting that while 'space became a point of departure' for Gabo's constructions and their carvings, 'neither Moore nor Hepworth found themselves able to relinquish their relationship with wood and stone, a relationship which had proved so fruitful' (A.M. Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, 1968, rev. ed. 1987, p.74). The solution, exemplified by Three Forms, 1935 and by Moore's more organic Three-piece Carving, 1934 (destroyed, repr. David Sylvester, Henry Moore Complete Sculpture: Volume 1 Sculpture 1921-48, pp.38-9, LH 149), was the juxtaposition of abstract forms on a definite field. This seemed to owe something to Paul Nash's paintings of juxtaposed solids, and Three Forms, 1935 has been compared to Nash's Equivalents for the Megaliths, 1935 (Tate Gallery T01251) with its concentration upon illusionistic cylinders (Morphet 1977, [p.3]). Rather than the Surrealistic disjuncture taken up by Nash and Moore, Hepworth sought the contemporary 'equivalent' for pre-historic carving in geometrical solids, relying on the sphere in Three Forms, 1935 and related works such as Two Forms and Sphere, Two Segments and Sphere, 1935-6 (BH 79, private collection, repr. Hodin 1961, pl.79) and Conoid, Sphere and Hollow II, 1937 (BH 100, Government Art Collection, repr. Read 1952, pl.53). As well as the defiant balance, the attraction of the sphere lay in the same purity of form found in the circles of Nicholson's reliefs.

However, in writing of the association of architecture with the use of white in Nicholson's reliefs, Charles Harrison has argued that 'the whiteness of the white reliefs should be perhaps taken as the distillation of a particular set of interests in the apperceptive world of painting, rather than as a reflection of an aspect of the history of design' (English Art and Modernism 1900-1939, 1981, p.264). Hepworth certainly shared the 'pursuit of an extreme clarity' which Harrison associates with Nicholson's memories of visiting 'the white-painted studios of Arp or Brancusi in 1932-3' (ibid.). For her part, Hepworth added a potent memory of Mondrian's studio which 'made me gasp with surprise at its beauty ... everything gleamed with whiteness' (Read 1952, section 3). She had also shared the important visits to the studios of Brancusi and Arp. A 'miraculous feeling of eternity' struck her in Brancusi's studio, where 'humanism ... seemed intrinsic in all the forms' (Read 1952, section 2). The immediate impact seems to have been exercised in Hepworth's organic abstractions of 1933-4 which drew upon Arp's work, but by 1935 she was responding to Brancusi's referential ovoid and oval forms by converting them into the more impassive abstraction of such works as Three Forms, 1935. Like Brancusi, Hepworth allowed herself greater variety in her choice of coloured materials than did Nicholson in his reliefs.

Three Forms, 1935 was conceived while Hepworth was a member of Abstraction Creation and came to represent an achievement of 'constructive' art. She was amongst those responsible for introducing it to Britain with the exhibitions of the 7&5 in 1935 and Abstract and Concrete Art(1936) organised by Nicolete Gray; Three Forms, 1935 featured in both. The validity of constructive art raised considerable debate, and encouraged the editors of the 'survey' publication, Circle(Gabo, Nicholson and the architect Leslie Martin), to solicit contributions from progressive scientists. The physicist Desmond Bernal was one of these and, in the same year, he wrote the foreword to Hepworth's exhibition (Lefevre Gallery, 1937), in which he drew attention to the 'surfaces of slightly varying positive curvature' and the exactitude of the 'placing and orientation' of forms. In an undated letter, perhaps in relation to these observations, Hepworth wrote to Bernal of the intuitive experience of the artist and defended constructive art as 'the one way of freeing every conceivable idea to its fullest intensity' (undated [1937-9], Bernal Archive, University of Cambridge, Add:8287/384). More specifically she added, with accompanying sketches of Three Forms, 1935: 'When you criticised my carving & said this was wrong [arrow to sphere] & should have been this [arrow to dotted-in cylinder] you were quite right, sculpturally, spatially & constructively'. Given her differentiation of the roles of artist and scientist, such an unequivocal acceptance of Bernal's sculptural judgement seems astonishing, but it may reflect a dissatisfaction with an earlier work (despite the proportional relationships it used) by comparison with the standards of her present work. So much is implied by her concluding remarks about the work: