Sculpture: In Abstract Memoriam

Dag Hammarskjold was more than the late Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was a man of feeling, a poet, who wrote of a small sculpture that he kept in his office: “Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?” The question was answered at Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, on Sept. 18, 1961, when his airplane crashed during a tour of the chaotic Congo. The sculpture was by Barbara Hepworth, 61, Britain’s top woman artist. Last week another Hepworth bronze appeared at the United Nations.

Abstract as an apple, its tensile curves suggest nothing but nature as they wind around its 21-ft. height—an ideal counter to the squared shimmer of the Secretariat Building’s facade. Symbolically, the bold bronze seems a play on the Swedish diplomat’s name—a hammered shield. Inside the pierced circle of the design, Sculptress Hepworth has inscribed: “To the glory of God and the memory of Dag Hammarskjold.”