Kenneth Armitage, R.A. (1916-2002)

Sibyl (version 2)

Details

Kenneth Armitage, R.A. (1916-2002)
Sibyl (version 2)
signed with initials 'K.A.' (on the back) and stamped with the foundry mark 'GUSS H NOACK BERLIN' (on the back)
bronze with a dark brown patina
38½ in. (97.7 cm.) high
Conceived in 1961.
The present work is number 2 in an edition of 6.

Provenance

Laurent Delaye Gallery, London, where purchased by the present owner in 2003.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Kenneth Armitage, London, Marlborough Gallery, 1962, p. 27, another cast illustrated.
T. Woollcombe (ed.), Kenneth Armitage Life and Work, Much Hadham, 1997, p. 144, no. KA107.

Exhibited

London, Marlborough Gallery, Kenneth Armitage, May 1962, no. 18, another cast exhibited.

Lot Essay

Although Sibyl (version 2) is undoubtedly suggestive of the human anatomy, the figure is also evocative of a tree form. The 'arms' which reach forward reinforce the blindness of the figure. Armitage chose to refer to the figure as a sibyl to suggest that its psychic vision allows it to see. Armitage worked on three versions of the Sibyl figure in 1961, and in 1991 he was recorded for the National Sound Archive as saying 'I began a series of figures I called Sibyls, which have a strange link with what I feel sibyls look like. It's hard to define why, but the title seems to me appropriate. They had a feature which I used in the Mouton Sun for the Rothschild commission, that is, a shelf sticking out, which had come fom the bracket fungus I had seen on the trees at Corsham, and had enormous navels' (see T. Woollcombe (ed.), op. cit., p. 63).

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