Modernist Sculptor. Hepworth is often credited with helping develop the modernist art. She was awarded the diploma of the Royal College of Art in 1924. Barbara Hepworth was born in Yorkshire, England in 1903. Hepworth went to Leeds School of Art in England in 1919. Then studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London in 1921-24. At both schools, Henry Moore was a fellow student, whom she was in contact with and bounced ideas off each other. Her beginning work is quasi-abstract, but her later work, Hepworth is completely abstract. The work she creates is influenced by nature and she is interested in the play of light and dark. Barbara Hepworth died in 1975 in an accidental fire in her studio in England.