“The surface of the sculpture is partly natural, partly worked. The back and sides contrast with the front: the clay is lumpy and dragged down as though by its own weight, stressing the figure’s massiveness, its front is comparatively smooth and suggestive of flesh and skin, here taut, there loose. This work is perhaps the clearest instance, among the works illustrated here, of what I have described as ambiguity of expression. Possibly Armitage’s mind was occupied with images of tragedy when he began to work on this figure, but at the same time, it seems an ironically witty work, an affectionate leg-pull at the expense of Venus. She sits lumpishly, her body like a cake of soap. Breasts navel and head make horizontal rectangles against the vertical form - each a quizzical paraphrase of the object of man’s desire… it was wonderfully refreshing to come across this undemonstrative figure, at once amusing, playful and tough within its intimate scale.”
Extract from Art in Progress by Norbert Lynton, 1962
" In 1955 I made Seated Woman with Square Head. It was sixty-one centimetres high, a dumpy, fat figure, a cast of which is owned by the Tate. A square head was used on a later work for the Mouton Rothschild commission. So far as I know, I have never been influenced by any contemporary work; one does one's work because it comes from the inside and not because of anyone else. But in this case I was struck by Sidney Nolan's series of paintings based on the infamous bandit Ned Kelly with his black steel helmet. Sidney Nolan's paintings were haunting. Titles are very difficult; sometimes it is very natural to call a piece by what is most striking about it, if there is some meand of identification, such as a square head, a Sprawling Woman or a Figure Lying on its Side which you cannot mistake "
Kenneth Armitage in his own words from the book Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, 1997