Kenneth Armitage 1916-2002
People in the Wind (Large V2), 1959
bronze
height 64.8 cm (25 1/2 in)
monogrammed and inscribed 'No. 2' on the base
Conceived in 1950 and cast in 1959, the present work is from the edition of 6. It was with this sculpture, the large version of 'People in the Wind', that...
Conceived in 1950 and cast in 1959, the present work is from the edition of 6.
It was with this sculpture, the large version of 'People in the Wind', that Kenneth Armitage shot to international fame, as one of the group of young sculptors who participated in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1952. The exhibition garnered this talented generation, which, as well as Armitage, included Lynn Chadwick, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, Reg Butler (also represented in the collection of Mr and Mrs Joseph Blank, lots 326-328), Bernard Meadows and Robert Adams, widespread fame and 'People in the Wind', along with 'Family going for a Walk', became Armitage’s most iconic sculpture, occupying a unique and formative position in the history of the post-war zeitgeist. Casts of 'People in the Wind' were acquired by prominent collectors and collections, at that moment and later, including those of Peggy Guggenheim, MoMA, and Tate. Armitage wrote to a collector who bought another cast: 'People in the Wind' was very important in my work being the first piece to become well known - it was immediately illustrated in journals in many countries...I am pleased you got this piece but also a little disappointed - I had wanted to buy it back for myself to keep for ever!!
Armitage was at the heart of the British avant-garde after WWII and in large part that was precipitated through his role teaching at the Bath Academy of Art, the forward-looking academy run by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis at Corsham Court, where numerous leading lights of the British arts scene taught or studied. Armitage, alongside Bernard Meadows, was responsible for building the foundry at Corsham (based on Chadwick’s foundry); William Turnbull was also on the staff alongside James Tower, the famed ceramicist and Armitage’s great friend. Whilst at Corsham, Armitage turned his attention to how groups of figures that are massed together register as a single form to the spectator, before the spectator perceives the individuals:
'Joining figures together I found in time I wanted to merge them so completely they formed a new organic unit - a simple mass of whatever shape I liked, containing only that number of heads, limbs or other detail I felt necessary', Kenneth Armitage, quoted in Norbert Lynton, 'Kenneth Armitage', Methuen, London, 1962, unpaginated.
The inspiration for 'People in the Wind' lay in a very specific memory whilst the distinctive angularity and etiolation lay in sources close to home: ''People in the Wind' had a pronounced front and side elevation with two membranes meeting at right angles giving the idea of bulk without solid convex forms. The elongated and slightly divergent necks derived from the plants which grew at my studio door and which I watched and drew because of their structural buoyancy. Each had half a dozen stalks coming up and a small stem absolutely upright and straight and opening out of the top. This gave an intended lightness and economy, away from the heavy masses which I associate with my previous stone carving. The subject of people struggling against the wind came from seeing, from the window in my London flat, a mother and her two children struggling against a strong wind. If you look at a crowd, you do not count the arms and legs, you just see odd arms swinging and the odd leg moving.' James Scott, 'The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage', Lund Humphries, London, 2016, p.29.
The mother and children come together as a literal family unit, pushing forward together against the elements, clothes and limbs melding into one mass. Whilst the group of sculptors at the 1952 Venice Biennale have become known as the Geometry of Fear, 'People in the Wind' could not be further removed from this sentiment: 'There was no “geometry of fear”, I was in a state of happiness after the war. I felt I was singing a song when I was demobbed. I felt “I am alive; now I am going to work”, and I did…joyfully' Kenneth Armitage, quoted in James Scott, 'The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage', Lund Humphries, London, 2016, p.34. Instead, Armitage, with gentle humour and great humanity, creates a work of unity and togetherness, of humanity and playfulness. Perhaps there is a hint of fragility in the elongated, thin necks but there is also strength, with arms firmly stretched out, elbows behind, the group leaning into, embracing, the wind.
Groundbreaking and visionary, the collection of Mr. And Mrs. Joseph Blank charts a singular path in Postwar art. With an expert eye, the couple acquired deep holdings of artists outside of the contemporary mainstream, focusing primarily on three-dimensional works and important works by Black artists, long before the broader market had grown to appreciate them. On their waterfront estate in New York, the couple lived on grounds peppered with expressive, masterfully constructed sculpture by the likes of Melvin Edwards, while inside their home, socially engaged and formally innovative works by Jacob Lawrence flanked their walls. Unmoored from a single style or movement, the Blanks collected with total freedom including exceptional examples of post-war British sculpture by Kenneth Armitage, Lynn Chadwick and Reg Butler. More than anything, a daringness in approaching the new and an enthusiasm for the objects, cultures, and points of view of the artists in their home define the collection.
'The bravery of Armitage's position is that he has little interest in formal issues, expressing instead an intuitive understanding of posture that is not to do with action but with reaction, or the way the body accommodates its environment - in this case, leaning into the wind. There is no mass in this sculpture; it is as if the bodies are given their weight by the invisible wind. And this transference is the realisation of the impalpable in the material, or the transient in the permanent.' Anthony Gormley
It was with this sculpture, the large version of 'People in the Wind', that Kenneth Armitage shot to international fame, as one of the group of young sculptors who participated in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1952. The exhibition garnered this talented generation, which, as well as Armitage, included Lynn Chadwick, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, Reg Butler (also represented in the collection of Mr and Mrs Joseph Blank, lots 326-328), Bernard Meadows and Robert Adams, widespread fame and 'People in the Wind', along with 'Family going for a Walk', became Armitage’s most iconic sculpture, occupying a unique and formative position in the history of the post-war zeitgeist. Casts of 'People in the Wind' were acquired by prominent collectors and collections, at that moment and later, including those of Peggy Guggenheim, MoMA, and Tate. Armitage wrote to a collector who bought another cast: 'People in the Wind' was very important in my work being the first piece to become well known - it was immediately illustrated in journals in many countries...I am pleased you got this piece but also a little disappointed - I had wanted to buy it back for myself to keep for ever!!
Armitage was at the heart of the British avant-garde after WWII and in large part that was precipitated through his role teaching at the Bath Academy of Art, the forward-looking academy run by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis at Corsham Court, where numerous leading lights of the British arts scene taught or studied. Armitage, alongside Bernard Meadows, was responsible for building the foundry at Corsham (based on Chadwick’s foundry); William Turnbull was also on the staff alongside James Tower, the famed ceramicist and Armitage’s great friend. Whilst at Corsham, Armitage turned his attention to how groups of figures that are massed together register as a single form to the spectator, before the spectator perceives the individuals:
'Joining figures together I found in time I wanted to merge them so completely they formed a new organic unit - a simple mass of whatever shape I liked, containing only that number of heads, limbs or other detail I felt necessary', Kenneth Armitage, quoted in Norbert Lynton, 'Kenneth Armitage', Methuen, London, 1962, unpaginated.
The inspiration for 'People in the Wind' lay in a very specific memory whilst the distinctive angularity and etiolation lay in sources close to home: ''People in the Wind' had a pronounced front and side elevation with two membranes meeting at right angles giving the idea of bulk without solid convex forms. The elongated and slightly divergent necks derived from the plants which grew at my studio door and which I watched and drew because of their structural buoyancy. Each had half a dozen stalks coming up and a small stem absolutely upright and straight and opening out of the top. This gave an intended lightness and economy, away from the heavy masses which I associate with my previous stone carving. The subject of people struggling against the wind came from seeing, from the window in my London flat, a mother and her two children struggling against a strong wind. If you look at a crowd, you do not count the arms and legs, you just see odd arms swinging and the odd leg moving.' James Scott, 'The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage', Lund Humphries, London, 2016, p.29.
The mother and children come together as a literal family unit, pushing forward together against the elements, clothes and limbs melding into one mass. Whilst the group of sculptors at the 1952 Venice Biennale have become known as the Geometry of Fear, 'People in the Wind' could not be further removed from this sentiment: 'There was no “geometry of fear”, I was in a state of happiness after the war. I felt I was singing a song when I was demobbed. I felt “I am alive; now I am going to work”, and I did…joyfully' Kenneth Armitage, quoted in James Scott, 'The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage', Lund Humphries, London, 2016, p.34. Instead, Armitage, with gentle humour and great humanity, creates a work of unity and togetherness, of humanity and playfulness. Perhaps there is a hint of fragility in the elongated, thin necks but there is also strength, with arms firmly stretched out, elbows behind, the group leaning into, embracing, the wind.
Groundbreaking and visionary, the collection of Mr. And Mrs. Joseph Blank charts a singular path in Postwar art. With an expert eye, the couple acquired deep holdings of artists outside of the contemporary mainstream, focusing primarily on three-dimensional works and important works by Black artists, long before the broader market had grown to appreciate them. On their waterfront estate in New York, the couple lived on grounds peppered with expressive, masterfully constructed sculpture by the likes of Melvin Edwards, while inside their home, socially engaged and formally innovative works by Jacob Lawrence flanked their walls. Unmoored from a single style or movement, the Blanks collected with total freedom including exceptional examples of post-war British sculpture by Kenneth Armitage, Lynn Chadwick and Reg Butler. More than anything, a daringness in approaching the new and an enthusiasm for the objects, cultures, and points of view of the artists in their home define the collection.
'The bravery of Armitage's position is that he has little interest in formal issues, expressing instead an intuitive understanding of posture that is not to do with action but with reaction, or the way the body accommodates its environment - in this case, leaning into the wind. There is no mass in this sculpture; it is as if the bodies are given their weight by the invisible wind. And this transference is the realisation of the impalpable in the material, or the transient in the permanent.' Anthony Gormley
Provenance
Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, from where aquired in 1961, and thence by descentPrivate collection, Europe
Literature
Norbert Lynton (intro.), 'Kenneth Armitage, An Arts Council Exhibition', Lund Humphries, London, 1973, illustrated n.p. (another cast)Tamsyn Woollcombe (ed.), 'Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work', The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1997, no. KA8, illustrated p. 28 (another cast)
James Scott and Claudia Milburn, 'The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage', Lund Humphries, London, 2016, no. 14, illustrated p. 93 (another cast)