Kenneth Armitage, R.A.

Purchased directly from the Artist by the Jerwood Foundation, September 1999

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Kenneth Armitage, May 1962, cat. no.25, illustrated (another cast);
Zurich, Galerie Charles Lienhard, Kenneth Armitage, June - July 1963, cat. no.1419 (another cast); 
Ragley Hall, Warwickshire (September 1999 to present).

Tamsyn Woollcombe, Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, Lund Humphries, London, 1997, illustrated p.61 (another cast).

Generally the sculpture is in good overall condition. The patina is worn and streaked in places. There are spots of staining and debris, which is consistent with the piece being exhibited outdoors. Please telephone the department on +44 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions about the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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In the late 1950s Marlborough Fine Art was building up a stable of the leading figures in contemporary British art. It is, perhaps, a measure of the position that Armitage held that he was in 1959 brought into that establishment and was therefore presented alongside such major and established figures as Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore.

Such perception was certainly built on solid foundations. Little known at the beginning of the decade, Armitage was included in the landmark 'New Aspects of British Sculpture' exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1952, a show which launched the careers of a whole generation of British sculptors. Ably presented by his then gallery, Gimpel Fils, in the space of the next few years he appeared in exhibitions, solo and group, institutional and commercial, across the globe. His first New York show was in 1954 at the Bertha Shaefer Gallery, and on that visit he met many of the leading American artists, including Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Philip Guston and David Smith, and struck up some deep friendships. By 1958, when he won the David E. Bright Foundation Award at the Venice Biennale, Armitage was a star of the international art scene. His large retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1959 gave a superb platform to showcase the achievements of the decade.

The move to Marlborough seems to have coincided with a shift in his work, towards a larger scale and a rethinking of the elements of his sculpture. The question of scale may have been a response to the technical excellence of the new foundry to which Marlborough introduced Armitage, Hermann Noack in Berlin, and the ability to produce consistently larger sculpture started to yield results almost immediately. Whilst his earlier work had often drawn groups of figures together, such as in Family going for a Walk of 1951 or The Seasons of 1956, monumental single figures started to appear more frequently. Standing Figure of 1961 is often grouped with another work of the same period, Standing Man of 1960, and they both demonstrate this change in his sculpture, with the figures becoming simpler in form. Whilst his earlier sculptures had often presented his figures in movement, people walking, children skipping, women stretching or sprawling, these two sculptures are resolutely stationary, their massive bulk creating an air of permanence and solidity that would become a major feature of the work he was to produce throughout the 1960s. Standing Figure carries an air of strength in adversity, something that can weather the storm. Its surface too enhances such an impression, and indeed Armitage recalled working it 'more as a landscape painter works...surrendering himself to what he sees' (The Artist, 'My Life and Work, in Tamsyn Woollcombe, Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, HMF/Lund Humphries, London, 1997, p.63).