INGE KING: SCULPTOR.

Inge King, today recognised as a leading Australian sculptor, was born in Berlin in 1918 and educated at Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and Glasgow School of Art. Her emigration to Australia in 1951 was to greatly enrich Australian cultural life as she introduced contemporary ideas, encouraged her peers to experiment and educated the community to accept the innovative, intellectually challenging forms of modern sculpture.
Throughout her long and illustrious career she has continued to develop in new and surprising ways. Exposure to New York abstract expressionism led to her taking up welded steel as her medium in 1959 and to the construction of boldly monumental pieces, many of which now grace Australian public buildings and plazas and are a tribute to her particular interest in the integration of sculpture and architecture. Although introduced to New York minimalism during an overseas tour in the late 1960s her work retained a personal, emotive quality which has ensured its unique place in the development of modernism in Australia. Figuration, long abandoned in favour of expressive abstraction, re-emerged in 1989 heralding a new era of dynamic life-affirming works which have been exhibited in major exhibitions including a retrospective of her work at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1992.

Judith Trimble is Senior Lecturer in Art and Architectural History at Deakin University.