Kenneth Armitage 1916-2002
Seated Woman with Square Head, 1955
bronze
23½ by 9¾ by 12¼ inches
edition of 6stamped Susse Fondeur, ParisArchive no.KA 54

Provenance
Gimpel Fils, London
Private Collection , USA since 1965
Private Collection, UK

The Tate Gallery has one of this edition in its collection - Seated Woman with Square Head (Version B), 1955. The Tate suggests that there are two versions of height 24 inches as not all of the bronzes have the sharp scored line down the front of the stomach. This is supported by the illustration of the plaster model (Version A) in Jonathan Clark's 2005 catalogue.

The literature states that another version owned in 1960 by Robert Scull, Lond Island, NY, (Roland Penrose, 1960) but is not this cast, which was acquired later in 1965.

Exhibited
Venice, XXIX Venice Biennale, British Pavilion - Kenneth Armitage, S W Hayter, William Scott, Summer 1958, cat no.71

London, The British Council, Kenneth Armitage, Whitechapel Art Gallery, July -August 1959, cat no. 24, illus b/w plate XI

Hannover, Kestener-Gesellschaft, Kenneth Armitage and Lynn Chadwick, 12 April - 15 May 1960, cat no.12, illus b/w

Middelheim, 5^th Biennale, May - September, 1959 cat no.4

Leeds City Art Gallery, Gregory Memorial Exhibition, 9 March - 10 April 1960, cat no.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, cat no.7, illus, touring to:
Canada, New Zealand, Australia, 1961-1963

Nowich, Castle Museum, Kenneth Armitage, Arts Council, 16 December 1972 - 14 January 1973, cat no.5, touring to:
Bolton, Oldham, Kettering, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Llanelli, Leeds, Hull

Literature
Roland Penrose, Kenneth Armitage, Artists of Our Time Series, Vol VII, Bodensee-Verlag, Amriswil, Switzerland, 1960, cat no.16, illus b/w

Norbert Lynton, Kenneth Armitage, Methuen, London, 1962, illustrated b/w p15

Alan Bowness, Kenneth Armitage- Life and Work, Lund Humphries, 1997, London cat no. KA54 illustrated b/w p46, p44



“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.”

Extract from Art in Progress by Norbert Lynton, 1962

" In 1955 I made Seated Woman with Square Head. It was sixty-one centimetres high, a dumpy, fat figure, a cast of which is owned by the Tate. A square head was used on a later work for the Mouton Rothschild commission. So far as I know, I have never been influenced by any contemporary work; one does one's work because it comes from the inside and not because of anyone else. But in this case I was struck by Sidney Nolan's series of paintings based on the infamous bandit Ned Kelly with his black steel helmet. Sidney Nolan's paintings were haunting. Titles are very difficult; sometimes it is very natural to call a piece by what is most striking about it, if there is some meand of identification, such as a square head, a Sprawling Woman or a Figure Lying on its Side which you cannot mistake "

Kenneth Armitage in his own words from the book Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, 1997