Kenneth Armitage

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich
Philip and Muriel Berman Collection, U.S.A.
Private Collection

London, Marlborough Fine Art, May 1962, no.20, illustrated twice in the exhibition catalogue. 

Tamsyn Woollcombe (ed.) in association with the artist, Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1997, KA109, p.144.

Dirt has gathered in some of the crevices and there are a few very minor abrasions to the surface. Otherwise the sculpture is in good overall condition. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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The present work is the first of 2 casts executed from the unrealised edition of 4.

In 1959 Armitage had moved from his original gallery, Gimpel Fils, to Marlborough Fine Art, and this had resulted in his being introduced to the Noack foundry in Berlin. Noack were very experienced with large scale casting, and although Armitage was always an artist who liked to be involved in all stages of the execution of a sculpture, this association does seem to have allowed for the production of more pieces of large size. Whilst even the smallest of Armitage's sculptures has, like that of Moore, a monumentality that seems to expand beyond its physical size, this ability to work consistently on a larger scale tied well with the pared down forms that he was using and in Prophet he is able to balance the essential forms and proportions of a figure with a vocabulary that has removed all basic references to that subject. This ability to imbue a human quality into his most abstracted sculptures is very much present in Armitage's sculpture of the 1960s, and is equally seen in the Pandarus series of works that followed the present work.

The unflinching concentration on the basic elements of the seated form seen in Prophet is also in marked contrast to the emphasis much of Armitage's earlier sculpture had for groups of figures which meld together, thereby removing much of the individual character of each figure. The sculptures which had initially made his reputation in the early part of the previous decade, such as People in the Wind (KA7) or Family going for a Walk (KA15, see lot 194), meld the figures together in such a way that it is the unity of the group rather than the individual qualities of each element that catches the viewer's attention. However, as his reputation grew and his work became more recognised it seems that Armitage developed the confidence to present his figures alone and without the support of a group.