Kenneth Armitage

Gimpel Fils, London, from whom acquired by Bertha Schaefer Gallery, March 1956
Henry Clay Kern, July 1973
Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, where purchased by Morris Bergreen, 18th July 1973

New York, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, Kenneth Armitage, March 1956 (details untraced).

The sculpture appears sound. There is some very slight rubbing to some of the protruding edges of the work. There are some traces of casting residue, and a few light traces of surface dirt across the work. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in very good overall condition. The work is presented on a stone base, which is very slightly chipped at one of the upper edges. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding 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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Like many artists of his generation, Kennneth Armitage’s early career was interrupted by the Second World War (during which he served in the Royal Artillery, spotting enemy aircraft by their flat, black silhouettes, something that was to deeply influence his work in the years to follow). And yet just six years after being de-mobbed, and only three years into his life as a professional artist, Armitage had, in works such as Standing Group, already alighted upon the formal language and conceptual underpinning that was to make him one of Britain’s most influential sculptors, as well as an artist of international renown.

Standing Group contains all the classic Armitage ideas  – fragility in opposition to strength; closeness combined with isolation; the human form (and by implication the human spirit) pulled and stressed by the world around it – a world recently torn asunder by the War, whose recovery was now shadowed by the Cold War. In this relatively small but powerful work, the human body is merged into a flimsy structure that struggles to hold itself together, yet in this fragility we see tenacity too. Perhaps more than any other work of the early 1950s, which despite their formal etiolation are often optimistic, almost joyous in spirit, Standing Group, with its mysterious bindings and deeply scored surface (the plaster residue from casting burnt back in to the metal to create a ghostly white hue) reflects Norman Read’s idea of a ‘Geometry of Fear’, a concept he created for the introduction to the New Aspects of British Sculpture exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1952. It was this show that made an international star out of Armitage, as well as his contemporaries, Lynn Chadwick, William Turnbull, Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows and Eduardo Paolozzi. 

Armitage was invited to represent Britain again at Venice in 1958, this time as the only sculptor  – his vision of human forms stretched to breaking point and yet somehow stronger for it capturing the zeitgeist of those years. This established him as one of the most significant voices in post-war European sculpture, as did his inclusion in seminal surveys of European and American figurative art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the late 50s, shows such as The New Decade - 22 European Painters and Sculptors and New Images of Man, where his work was shown alongside – and, importantly, equal to – that of the likes of Richier and Giacommetti. In his statement for The New Decade, Armitage sums up the ideas that had preoccupied him since the early 50s, when he first began to link figures together and flatten out their bodies into beaten-sheets of metal: 'in addition to evoking emotional and sculptural experiences, I wanted the object to take its place sympathetically in the ordered human world…. Gravity stiffens this world, we can touch and see with verticals and horizontals – the movement of water, railways and even roads, our canals… architecture and engineering. We walk vertically and rest horizontally, and it is not easy to forget North, South, East, West and up and down.' (Museum of Modern Art, New York, The New Decade - 22 European Painters and Sculptors, exhibition catalogue, p.59)

In Standing Group we can still see the power of Armitage’s vision of the 1950s, the vision that the curators of those MoMA shows recognized instantly – a sculpture for its time and all time.