Robert Klippel
(Australia, United States of America 19 Jun 1920–19 Jun 2001)
Philadelphia
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
This collage is made from photographs taken from a nineteenth century book containing hundreds of finely detailed drawings of machines. Klippel cut and assembled the work, beginning with the vertical forms and building up the landscape section. The title 'Philadelphia' is taken from the frequent appearance of that name on the machine parts. In the late nineteenth century Philadelphia was the centre of an important industrial area in the United States of America. Klippel kept the name partly because of its mechanical associations and partly because of associations with works by Duchamp and Cézanne he had seen in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
An overwhelming surrealist/mechanist landscape, it is the largest and most important collage Klippel had so far produced, and a key work in the Gallery's representation of his art.
Australian Art Department, AGNSW, 2000
- Year
- 1978-1979
- Media
- Mixed media, Collage
- Medium
- photomontage on paper on canvas
- Dimensions
- 151.5 x 242.5cm
- Signature & date
- Signed and dated l.r. corner, black ink "Robert Klippel 1979".
- Credit
- Purchased 1980
- Accession number
- 4.1980
- Copyright
- © Robert Klippel Estate
