Robert Edward Klippel Australia, 1920-2001

Born in Sydney in 1920, Klippel attended night classes in sculpture at East Sydney Technical College under Lyndon Dadswell. He moved to England in the mid 1940’s where he became life-long friend and collaborator with Australian surrealist painter James Gleeson. He also spent time in Paris, acquainting himself with Picasso’s works of the constructivist period and also with Andre Breton and the French Surrealists. He returned to Australia for a few years and then emigrated in the United States where he moved away from a more traditional sculpture and began to incorporate machine parts, pieces of wood and various discarded industrial materials in his works. He began casting wax and plastic parts into bronze from which he made sculptural assemblages from the disparate elements. In the 1980’s he began working with wooden foundry patterns and used them to cast a group of imposing bronzes for the Australian National Gallery’s Sculpture Garden. It also resulted in a prodigious series of painted wooden sculptures.

Robert Klippel is one of the most prolific of the artists listed in our database, with the number of works offered for sale by auction since 1973 of 815, of which 588 (72%) were sold. The highest price recorded for the artist is $507,800 for Opus 361 (Eighteen Miniature Constructions) sold by Christies in March 2006. This year 6 works have been offered for sale. Works by Robert Klippel are held by the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW and a further nine major public national galleries (see list below).