SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.- Australia抯 pre-eminent Surrealist painter, James Gleeson AO and his partner Frank O扠eefe, through the Gleeson O扠eefe Foundation, will give the Art Gallery of New South Wales $16 million dollars to acquire works for the Gallery抯 collection. The Gallery is the sole beneficiary of their recently established Foundation. The Foundation has begun with six million dollars and is expected to grow in time to $16 million. Edmund Capon, Director said today this is by far the largest fund ever established for the benefit of the Gallery and this generosity is unparalleled in the history of the institution.

The Foundation was set up to acquire and give to the Art Gallery of New South Wales works of lasting importance to the art and general communities. A literary imagination and a masterful technique have typified the art of James Gleeson since the days of his indenture at East Sydney Technical College in the 1930s. Among the first Australian artists, loosely grouped to embrace surrealism, Gleeson, now 91, remains its last legitimate defender, although his colleague at the time and occasional collaborator Robert Klippel can be accorded the distinction in sculpture. Robert Klippel who died in 2001, is widely regarded as Australia抯 greatest sculptor.

Through the Foundation, the Art Gallery recently purchased one of Robert Klippel抯 most significant works from the 1970s, Opus 300. James Gleeson, a long-standing close associate of Robert Klippel, said he was 憈hrilled� with this purchase.

慣he Gallery received an enormous boost to our collections by a gift from the artist抯 son Andrew Klippel in 2003. With that work and now the acquisition of Opus 300 through the Gleeson O扠eefe Foundation, the Art Gallery of New South Wales now houses two of those sculptures the artist considered to be his greatest works� said Edmund Capon. Opus 300 is the Gleeson O扠eefe Foundation抯 inaugural purchase.