British sculptor Kenneth Armitage died in Leeds, his birth place, on January 22nd at 85. Born on July 18 1916, Armitage studied art in Leeds before frequenting the Slade School in London between 1937 and 1939.
He first produced stone sculptures, which he however destroyed, under the influence of ancien Egyptian art and did not work during the war years.
After befriending Henry Moore after the Second World War, he resumed his activities in producing bronze works recalling sculptures made in Greece around the 8th Century B.-C.
Armitage became quite successful during the early 1950s and had his first one-man show at Gimpel in 1952, the year he showed a bronze piece at the Venice Biennial.
In 1958 he was nominated as the best international sculptor aged under 45 and the following year he was invited at the Kassel Documenta while the British Council for the Arts did much to promote his work.
The Museum of Modern Art in Paris was one of the first international institutions to acquire one of his sculptures. Armitage was notably the object of a retrospective exhibition in Japan in 1978.
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