A surreal sculpture in which two folded arms appear to have emerged from a flat wall is being installed in the grounds of a Cambridge College.

Screen With Folded Arms, by the acclaimed British sculptor Kenneth Armitage, has been loaned to Clare College and will go on display in Memorial Court, off Queens Road.

The cast aluminium piece measures 6ft 5ins in height and consists of a three-part screen. Two large, heavy arms protrude from the central panel as if the body of a person is somehow embedded into the structure behind.

Kenneth Armitage (1916-2000) first came to international prominence in the middle of the 20th century as part of an exciting new generation of artists known for their anti-monumental and expressionist approach to sculpture.

He created Screen With Folded Arms in 1967 while he was working in Berlin. Originally the plan was that it would be put into the wall of a building to give the sense that someone was trapped inside.

Its design is typical of Armitage's work at the time. One of his chief interests as a sculptor was the idea of movement and how the form could capture a fixed gesture to express an emotion or intention. To explore this idea he created an entire series of “furniture figures” – sculpture in which tables and chairs are transformed into human beings, sitting or standing with their arms folded and their legs crossed. The sculpture of this period has a deliberately humorous quality.

The piece has been loaned to Clare College by Roche Court, a private sculpture park near Salisbury which features many more of Armitage's works from around the same time. It will be on display in Memorial Court for 12 months as a temporary replacement for a Henry Moore sculpture, The Falling Warrior, which has been removed for cleaning.

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