Kenneth Armitage was a towering figure of post-war British abstraction, shooting to international prominence at the 1952 Venice Biennale the year Herbert Read coined his phrase ‘geometry of fear’ to describe the eight young sculptors exhibiting.Yet, whilst his peers captured Cold War existential dread through jagged, anxious forms, Armitage’s practice remained deeply rooted in a whimsical celebration of the everyday.

Reach for the Stars represents the maquette for Armitage’s final, most ambitious public commission. Conceived in the last year of his life, the completed thirty-foot sculpture now stands permanently in Edinburgh. Modelled in plaster over an armature – a tactile technique Armitage championed over carving – this work synthesises the biological with the architectural, transforming the human limb into a structural column that reaches upward with characteristic warmth and playfulness.

Though intended as an edition of six, only three casts of this rare maquette were ever realised, making this the only available bronze from the edition. It stands as a poignant, uplifting testament to an extraordinary career, embodying Armitage’s own light-hearted philosophy:“If you reach for the stars, you might just reach the rooftops”.