SYDNEY.- Olsen Gallery today announced it will present an exhibition of significant works by Australia’s greatest sculptor Robert Klippel (1920-2001) at Sydney Contemporary from 7-10 September 2017, representing the first exhibition of the artist’s works in Australia for more than a decade. Entitled Colour and Form: Works from the Estate of Robert Klippel, the Olsen Gallery exhibition will present five of Klippel’s major sculptural works at Sydney Contemporary, together with a number of works on paper, sourced directly from the estate of the artist and including works that have never before appeared on the market.
Tim Olsen, Director of Olsen Gallery commented: “Robert Klippel is widely regarded as having produced the greatest body of work by an Australian sculptor. He developed a diverse and personal language of sculptural forms over his long and celebrated career spanning six decades. We are excited to be able to offer a number of key works to the market for the first time.”
Exhibited internationally alongside 20th century art luminaries including Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, René Magritte and Joan Miró, Robert Klippel is widely considered Australia's greatest sculptor and one of the most important sculptors of his generation internationally. Described in 1964 by art critic Robert Hughes as "one of the few Australian sculptors worthy of international attention", Klippel’s attitudes to art-making were founded in European Modernism and the generating ideas of his time – Cubism, Constructivism and Surrealism.
The driving influence of Klippel’s work and ongoing inspiration for the refinement of his sculptural practice was his belief that the artist “should follow the example of nature and build in such a way that the final form will be as inevitable as any form in nature”. His artistic aim was to always “express the workings of nature – in the broadest sense” which is reflected in the works presented by Olsen Gallery at Sydney Contemporary.
Klippel’s fascination with the structures and component parts of organic and mechanical forms remained at the centre of his work throughout his life. He commonly appropriated a diversity of materials as demonstrated in the major exhibition work No 363
Ninety-three constructions of coloured paper from 1980, a field of 93 tiny collage cardboard reliefs measuring no more than 18cm high, which he worked on for almost a year.
Notable for the great diversity of scale of his work, from intricate whimsical structures in metal to the large wooden assemblages of the 1980s, the exhibition features # 018 1968 – 2001, a metal steel construction measuring 25cm high. The exhibition also presents an example of Klippel’s mature work 657 5/6 1987, a 182 cm bronze sculpture which is characteristically untitled and distinguished by a simple number sequence.
Born in Australia in 1920, Klippel was an experienced sailor and veteran of naval service during the Second World War, becoming a model maker at the Navy Gunnery in 1943. He later studied at the Slade School of Art in London before moving to Paris, New York and Sydney, where he worked closely with highly influential artists including British artist Lucian Freud, Australian artist James Gleeson, originator of Surrealism André Breton, American sculptor Richard Stankiewicz and Australian artist John Olsen. He was a member of the 10th Avenue Club, a member only artist group founded by Willem DeKooning and Jackson Pollock and had his works exhibition alongside Picasso, Braque and Miró at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1961. He passed away on his 81st birthday in 2001 in Sydney and in 2002, was the subject of a major retrospective, Robert Klippel: A Tribute Exhibition, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The exhibition Colour and Form: Works from the Estate of Robert Klippel will be presented by Olsen Gallery at Sydney Contemporary from 7-10 September 2017.
