He was employed to make models of planes while he was serving in the Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships at the Gunnery Instruction Centre during World War II.
His parents' business was successful and with their support, he left Australia in 1947 to study at the Slade School of Fine Art where he remained for six months.
[2] Klippel's work commonly utilized an extraordinary diversity of junk materials: wood, stone, plastic toy kits, wooden pattern parts, typewriter machinery, industrial piping and machine parts, as well as bronze, silver, oils, photography, collage and paper.
He is also notable for the great diversity of scale of his work, from intricate whimsical structures in metal to the large wooden assemblages of the 1980s.
The two collaborated on several works, including Madame Sophie Sesostoris (1947–48),[3] a Pre-Raphaelite satire, combining Klippel's sculpture with Gleeson's painting.
By the time Klippel returned to Sydney in 1950, he was committed to construction as a method and was producing totally abstract sculptures.
In 1964, art critic Robert Hughes called Klippel "one of the few Australian sculptors worthy of international attention".
In the 1980s he completed a major series of small bronzes, as well as a large number of monumental wooden assemblages, made from the pattern-parts of early twentieth century maritime machinery.
Working with wood, metals, plastics, junk, machinery parts, oils, watercolours and paper, and utilising the techniques of casting, assemblage, painting and collage, he had completed over 1,200 sculptures by the end of the 1990s.