Prophet (small version 2)

Details

Kenneth Armitage, R.A. (1916-2000)
Prophet (small version 2)
signed with initials, numbered and dated 'KA 2/6 1962/75' (on the reverse at the base) and stamped with the foundry stamp 'Morris Singer/FOUNDERS/LONDON' (on the reverse at the base)
bronze with a light brown patina
12½ in. (31.7 cm.) high
Conceived in 1962.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, London, Marlborough Fine Art, May 1962, no. 22, another cast illustrated.
T. Woollcoombe (ed.), Kenneth Armitage Life and Work, Much Hadham, 1997, p. 146, KA115, another cast illustrated p. 64.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Prophet (small version 2) was cast in an edition of six. Alan Bowness comments, 'There is a series of Prophets and Sibyls of 1961-62, a linked group of three Guardians and a Monitor of 1961 - all figures of superior authority, seeming to offer advice or gifted with powers of divination and clairvoyance; yet all are rather empty, hollow figures that leave us strangely unmoved. All these sculptures have curious projecting flanges. The sculptor explained how they originated: 'I saw many years ago a curious fungus in the form of flat, horizontal shelves growing out in clusters from the tree trunk, which for some reason were exciting and which I had always wanted to incorporate in my work if the right opportunity came along''(Exhibition catalogue, Kenneth Armitage, Arts Council, 1972-3, p. 3).

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