No 86 metal construction

Robert Klippel's is the greatest body of work produced by an Australian sculptor. The artist's singular vision, inspired by the intricacies and profusion of the natural and built environments, and by his quest for a spiritually relevant form, stands alone in the history of Australian art. His work is characterised by his extraordinary sculptural inventiveness and is underpinned by two of the core practices of 20th century modernism: assemblage and collage.

Klippel displayed early fascination with the structures and component parts of organic and mechanical forms, and a desire to forge correspondences between the two. His primary pursuit was to poetically synthesise the twin energies, organic and mechanical, which he saw as the defining qualities of life and culture in the twentieth century.

'No 86 metal construction' exemplifies this pursuit and demonstrates the development of Klippel's practice at a pivotal time while he was working in the United States. It is one of only three sculptures Klippel produced in 1959, having moved from New York to take up a teaching post at the Minneapolis School of Art. The work is perpendicular in structure, comprised of steel sheets cut into straight-edged shapes and brazed together. Geometric planes have been assembled in angular relationships to form a dense composition, which is almost cubist in appearance and quite distinctive in Klippel's oeuvre.