Kenneth Armitage 1916-2002
Seated Woman with Square Head, 1955
bronze
23½ by 9¾ by 12¼ inches


Provenance
Gimpel Fils, London
Private Collection , USA since 1965

Exhibited
Venice, British Pavilion - Kenneth Armitage, S W Hayter, William Scott, XXIX Venice Biennale 1958, cat no.71
London, The British Council, Kenneth Armitage, Whitechapel Art Gallery, July -August 1959 cat no. 24 Plate XI
Middelheim 5^th Biennale, May-September,1959 Cat.4
Leeds City Art Gallery, Gregory Memorial Exhibition, 9^th March 1960 - 10^th April 1960, Cat.67, p19
The British Council, Recent British Sculpture, Robert Adams-Kenneth Armitage - Reg Butler-Lynn Chadwick-Hubert Dalwood-Barbara Hepworth-Bernard Meadows-Henry Moore-Eduardo Paolozzi, catalogue no.7, illustrated. Touring to Canada, New Zealand, Australia, 1961-1963

Literature
Alan Bowness, Kenneth Armitage- Life and Work, Lund Humphries, 1997, London cat No. KA54 p46 illustrated b/w
Norbert Lynton, Kenneth Armitage, Methuen, London, 1962, illustrated b/w



Armitage was one of a number of younger sculptors, including for example Reg Butler, William Turnbull and Lynn Chadwick, who after the Second World War rejected the traditional idea of sculpture as monumental and harmonious. When shown at the Venice Biennale in 1952, Herbert Read dubbed their spiky, fragmented forms the 'geometry of fear'. Their sculptures often suggested aggressive creatures, half human, half animal.

This is the last of four sculptures of seated women made by Armitage during 1954 and 1955. This particular version has a vertical line cut into the torso of the figure, which emphasises its geometric, block-like appearance.

“The surface of the sculpture is partly natural, partly worked. The back and sides contrast with the front: the clay is lumpy and dragged down as though by its own weight, stressing the figure’s massiveness, its front is comparatively smooth and suggestive of flesh and skin, here taut, there loose. This work is perhaps the clearest instance, among the works illustrated here, of what I have described as ambiguity of expression. Possibly Armitage’s mind was occupied with images of tragedy when he began to work on this figure, but at the same time, it seems an ironically witty work, an affectionate leg-pull at the expense of Venus. She sits lumpishly, her body like a cake of soap. Breasts navel and head make horizontal rectangles against the vertical form - each a quizzical paraphrase of the object of man’s desire... it was wonderfully refreshing to come across this undemonstrative figure, at once amusing, playful and tough within its intimate scale.”

An extract from Art in Progress by Norbert Lynton, 1962

Archive no. KA 54, one of an edition of 6, one of which is in the Tate Gallery’s collection.