Josefina de Vasconcellos has been active as a sculptor since the early 1920s. Born in England in 1904, the only child of a Brazilian diplomat and an English Quaker mother, she is a younger contemporary of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. In the years following the First World War she studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic, then in Paris with Bourdelle, then in Florence with Andriotti. But as an artist she has followed her own individual path, always believing that sculpture has a role to play as an inspirational force in society.