Robert Klippel AO was an Australian constructivist sculptor and teacher.
16 Facts About Robert Klippel
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Robert Klippel is often described in contemporary art literature as Australia's greatest sculptor.
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Robert Klippel trained to work in the wool industry but in 1939 he joined the Royal Australian Navy.
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Robert Klippel was employed to make models of planes while he was serving in the Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships at the Gunnery Instruction Centre during World War II.
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Robert Klippel lived and painted at The Abbey Arts Centre in New Barnet, London, along with artists Leonard French, James Gleeson, Peter Benjamin Graham, Douglas Green, Stacha Halpern, Grahame King and Inge King.
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Robert Klippel spent a year in Paris where he attended lectures by Jiddu Krishnamurti.
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Robert Klippel taught sculpture at the Minneapolis School of Art from 1958 to 1962 and returned to New York until 1963.
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Robert Klippel then returned to Sydney, where he remained until his death.
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Robert Klippel taught at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education from 1975 to 1979.
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Robert Klippel died in Sydney on his 81st birthday, 19 June 2001.
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Robert Klippel is notable for the great diversity of scale of his work, from intricate whimsical structures in metal to the large wooden assemblages of the 1980s.
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Whereas Moore had related the human figure to the forms of nature, Robert Klippel set out to relate the forms of nature to the shapes and forms of machinery in an industrial society.
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Robert Klippel's work was received with little enthusiasm in Australia at first, with his first sculptural work was not selling in his country until 1956.
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Robert Klippel moved away increasingly from traditional sculpture and produced his first junk assemblages in 1960.
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Robert Klippel began incorporating machine parts, pieces of wood and industrial piping into his works.
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In 1964, art critic Robert Hughes called Klippel "one of the few Australian sculptors worthy of international attention".