We tend to picture her sculptures unadorned. Monumental limestone couples. The mother and child in sensuous alabaster. Burled-wood torsos, all impressive in their purity and scale. Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) exploited her material with rigor, incorporating open space into closed rectangles, spheres, cones, and cylinders. Yet her modernism radiated a belief in the harmony between humans and nature. Hepworth’s work with color is less known. The exhibition “Hepworth in Colour” brings this aspect of her inventive practice into full view. Indeed, the show comes on the heels of a major art story of 2025, which saw Hepworth’s Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red, privately owned since its creation in 1943, purchased for the Hepworth Wakefield museum in West Yorkshire through a national fundraising campaign (price $3.8 million). The Courtauld has assembled a far-flung collection of prized examples of the artist’s colored sculptures and drawings, and explores the genesis of this new ingredient in her practice. —Patricia Zohn