Opus 361 (Eighteen Miniature Constructions)

In 1979, Robert Klippel created a series of miniature compositions that have been acclaimed as a test of the limits of human dexterity and viewing. The constructions, assembled as collages of fine sheets of tin, fine wire, plastic and coloured paper, expressed Klippel's conviction that intricacy and magnificence were not intrinsic only to works on a grand scale. "So fragile that they have been encased in a Perspex box from the time of completion, they form a cryptic miniature tableau of some of the most spectacularly beautiful and intricate of Klippel's constructions. Linear and spatial, oriented largely to a vertical axis, their forms synthesise the mechanical and organic in ways which again image neither but poetically claim to rival the myriad forms of Nature and the machine." (D. Edwards, op. cit. p.134