Armitage, Kenneth
Kenneth Armitage was born in the suburb of Leeds, England in 1916. He occupied himself with drawing and making shapes and things at home as a child and his school report noted that Kenneth showed inventive and artistic abilities from an early age. He applied for a scholarship to Leeds Art School attended by Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) fifteen years previously which he won at the age of seventeen. During his time at the art school, he began to carve in Portland stone at home and won two prizes one of which was presented to him by Sir Philip Hendy (1900 – 1980), the Director of the Leeds City Art Gallery and the future Director of the National Gallery in London.
After winning a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art, Armitage started his course in London in September 1937. His sculpture tutor was A.H.Gerrard (1899-1998) who taught direct stone carving as practised by Constantin Brancusi ( 1876-1957), Moore and Hepworth and often took his students to the Cycladic and Egyptian rooms of the British Museum. During his Slade years, Kenneth was particularly influenced by the work of Jacob Epstein (1880-1959). In 1939 Armitage graduated from Slade winning two first prizes in sculpture. He volunteered at the outbreak of the war serving in the Royal Artillery.
During the war, Armitage took part in the London group show at the Royal Academy in London in 1944 and was appointed the first Head of Sculpture of the new Bath Academy of Art in 1946 while William Scott (1913-1989) became the Head of Painting. During his six years at Bath Kenneth travelled in Europe and started to build his career as a sculptor becoming a good friend with Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003). He exhibited his works at Young Sculptors show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and, among 8 other sculptors, was chosen to represent Britain at the XXIV Venice Biennale in 1948 where his sculptures were bought by Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) and Alfred Barr (1902-1981), the Director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Armitage was offered the Gregory Fellowship in sculpture in 1953 and started to exhibit in various commercial galleries in London, Paris and New York. He represented Britain at XXIX Venice Biennale and won the David Bright prize for a sculptor aged below 45 years of age in 1958. He had exhibitions at Musee d’Arte Moderne in Paris, Brussels and Zurich the same year, his first retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery in London and Het Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam Van Beuningen in 1959 and Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, Japan (with Chadwick) in 1962.
Kenneth fame grew and he experimented with open-air sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s during which time he took part in numerous international exhibitions in Australia, Canada, Columbia, Hong Kong, Japan, France, USA and Turkey. Armitage was invited to show his sculptures by many well-established commercial galleries worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s and had another retrospective in Paris in 1985 and his 80th birthday survey in Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1996.
Kenneth Armitage works are present in most renowned public collections and museums such as National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Musee Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium; Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France; National Gallery, Helsinki, Finland; Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; Isreal Museum, Jerusalem; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy; National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Royal Academy of Arts, Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom; Museums of Modern Art in New York and Philadelphia, USA and many others.
