'I am interested in Kenneth Armitage's work from the late 1940s and early 50s (the 'linked' and 'laterally joined' bodies), when, grappling with the together and apartness of human experience, his sculpture proposed a new way of conveying collects ive experience.'
At the heart of Kenneth Armitage’s sculptural practice, evident in Children by the Sea, was an abiding dedication to the human form and the human condition. Armitage was propelled to fame after his inclusion in the infamous Venice Biennale exhibition of young British sculptors - the ‘Geometry of Fear’ generation - in 1952. As Armitage was to later reflect, it was, 'really the beginning of my professional life ... I was totally unknown before that, and in those few weeks, I became a known man internationally' (Kenneth Armitage, quoted in Tamsyn Woollcombe (ed.), Kenneth Armitage Life and Work, The Henry Moore Foundation, 1997, p.40).
Children by the Sea relates closely to two of Armitage’s celebrated works shown at the 1952 Venice Biennale: People in the Wind (casts of which were bought by Peggy Guggenheim and Alfred Barr for MoMA) and Family Going for a Walk (a cast of which was also bought a few months later by Barr). The sculpture was conceived in 1953 and continued Armitage’s exploration of uniting individual figures in such a way that they become one mass.
‘Joining figures together I found in t.mes 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’
In comparison to his contemporaries, Armitage’s sculptures seem most removed from the ‘Geometry of Fear’ term – inferring angst and violence – coined by Herbert Read. There is no spikiness or beastial imagery here; and while a sense of fragility may be detected, there is also strength in the figures’ unification. Children by the Sea, as the title itself evokes, is an optimistic image – it captures the fleeting joy and innocence of three children, hands clasped and skipping. Under a lurking Cold War tension, such imagery seemed more important than ever. The abstraction of the forms lends the work a t.mes less quality and allows it to resonate as emotively today as at the t.mes of its creation.