Sybil (Second Version)

Details

Kenneth Armitage, R.A. (1916-2002)
Sybil (Second Version)
signed with initials 'KA' (on the reverse)
bronze with a dark gold patina
40 in. (101.5 cm.) high
Conceived in 1961.

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 5 May 1973, lot 87.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 26 March 1993, lot 131 where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

T. Woollcombe, Kenneth Armitage Life and Work, Much Hadham, 1997, p. 144, KA107.

Exhibited

New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Armitage, 1962, no. 17, illustrated.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

Sybil (Second Version) was cast in an edition of six. The sculptor discusses his Sybil series, 'Then in 1961, I began a series of figures I called Sybils, which have a strange link with what I feel sibyls look like. It's hard to define why, but the title seems 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 from the bracket fungus I had seen on the trees at Corsham, and they had enormous navels' (see T. Woollcombe, op. cit., p. 63).

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