Winged Figure
| Winged Figure | |
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| BH 315 | |
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| Year | 1963 |
| Location | United Kingdom 
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| Coordinates | 51°31′N 0°08′W / 51.52°N 0.14°WCoordinates: 51°31′N 0°08′W / 51.52°N 0.14°W |
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Winged Figure (BH 315) is a 1963 sculpture by British artist Barbara Hepworth. One of Hepworth's best known works, it has been displayed in London since April 1963, on Holles Street near the junction with Oxford Street, mounted on the south-east side of the John Lewis department store. It is estimated that the sculpture is seen by approximately 200 million people each year.
It was granted a Grade II* listing in January 2016.
The new John Lewis store on Oxford Street replaced earlier war-damaged premises. The building was designed by architects Slater & Uren in 1956 and reopened in 1961.
John Lewis originally approached Jacob Epstein to create a sculpture to decorate the plain Portland stone side wall of the new store, but he declined as he was engaged on other commissions. Instead, in May 1961, John Lewis asked six other artists to propose designs. In addition to Hepworth – whose breakthrough public sculpture, Meridian, had recently been installed outside State House on Holborn – the others were Ralph Brown, Geoffrey Clarke, Tony Hollaway, Stefan Knapp, William Mitchell and Hans Tisdall. None of their initial designs was accepted.
Hepworth had been asked to express "the idea of common ownership and common interests in a partnership of thousands of workers" and in October 1961 Hepworth had proposed a different design, Three Forms in Echelon, but John Lewis rejected it. One of ten bronze maquettes of Three Forms in Echelon (BH 306) cast in 1965 (nine numbered casts plus one for the artist) is now held by the Tate Gallery.
Her second proposal, based on an enlargement of her 1957 sculpture Winged Figure I (BH 228), was accepted. Related sculptures by Hepworth, such as Stringed Fgure (Curlew) and Orpheus, were also made in sheet metal with rods.
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