Armitage, Kenneth, 1916-2002

William Kenneth Armitage, sculptor, was born in Leeds on 18 July 1916. He attended Leeds College of Art from 1933 to 1937 and then studied sculpture at the Slade, where he met Joan Moore. They married in 1940. When war was declared he volunteered for the Royal Artillery and eventually became second in command of aircraft identification at Devonport. After the war he was appointed Head of Sculpture at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, a position that he held from 1946 to 1956.

Armitage's work was exhibited in the 1952 Venice Biennale and he subsequently started showing work at various galleries including Bertha Schaefer and Paul Rosenberg & Co. in New York, and Gimpel Fils, the Whitechapel Art Gallery and Marlborough Fine Art in London. In 1956, he won the competition for the Krefeld monument, run by the Kaiser-Wilhelm Museum, with a figurative piece that incorporated the cellular structure of the bombed buildings in Krefeld.

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