Rosemary Madigan first met Robert Klippel AO (1920–2001) when they were part of a remarkable cohort of students of sculpture at the East Sydney Technical College in the 1940s. Madigan subsequently spent some time abroad, studying and travelling, and after returning home she taught at the South Australian School of Art. Klippel studied in London after the war and also spent time in New York before settling permanently in Sydney in 1963. Both became two of Australia's most significant sculptors. Following the end of Madigan's marriage in 1973, they began a professional and personal relationship that lasted until Klippel's death in 2001.
In this drawing we see Klippel's private self – not 'the-artist-in-his-studio' but the man at home wearing a favoured shirt (pink was his favourite shirt colour). As Madigan’s daughter Alice Giles AM noted: 'Mum was especially proud that she caught a softness and gentleness about him that she felt reflected her own special insight and experience of his personality.' Madigan kept this work until her death in 2019.
Purchased 2020
© Rosemary Madigan/Copyright Agency, 2024
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