When British sculptor Phyllida Barlow attended art school in London in the 1960s, feminine materials were considered taboo, and students were encouraged to make monumental, assertive, and sleek works.

In galleries and museums around the world, teetering masses of plywood, Phyllida Barlow turned piles of fabric, plaster, and cardboard into whimsical, gentle-giant sculptures. “My mother was very ...

Her art emerged, she once said, from a childhood memory of climbing up an empty staircase, hoping for the sky. There, in that gaping space, she would feel the reach and stretch of plaster, cement, ...