Collection
Standing Figure
Kenneth Armitage, R.A. (1916-2002)
Standing Figure
bronze
1.70 m high
Conceived in 1961 and cast in 1985
Standing Figure, with its small scale, broad flattened body, stick like legs and almost playful silhouette, demonstrates Kenneth Armitage's interest in finding ways to depict the human figure. He was influenced by the Egyptian and Cycladic art he saw in the British Museum in which figurative forms are reduced to almost abstract shapes, and also by his experiences in the Second World War when he taught soldiers to identify enemy aircraft and tanks by their silhouettes.
The piece is cast in Armitage's preferred medium of bronze: 'I work rather impatiently with ideas or images, and prefer a medium that helps me easily and quickly to get what I want. I have always been interested in bronze casting, mainly for the fluid, unifying and sensual quality it can give' (Artist's statement taken from the BBC television film on Kenneth Armitage in the series 'The Artist Speaks', produced and directed by John Read, 1960).
Armitage commented, 'In 1960 and 1961, I made two standing figures, just over life-size: Standing Man and Standing Figure. A lot of the works I make are thought out in my mind, but these two figures were worked on more as a landscape painter works, sitting in front of a landscape and surrendering himself to what he sees. They are figurative in their own way: one figure has one enormously thick leg and one thin leg' (see T. Woollcombe (ed.), Kenneth Armitage Life and Work, Much Hadham, 1997, pp. 60-3).