Rosemary Madigan (1926–2019) was one of Australia's most respected sculptors. Born in Adelaide, she was the youngest of the five children of geologist and academic Cecil Madigan, who'd been a member of Douglas Mawson’s 1911–1913 Antarctic expedition and who conducted significant explorations in the Simpson Desert in 1937. In 1940 Madigan went to Sydney to study sculpture under Lyndon Dadswell at East Sydney Technical College. It was there that she first met Robert Klippel. Having undertaken further study at the South Australian School of Art, Madigan was awarded the NSW Travelling Scholarship in 1950 and moved to London to undertake a diploma in carving at the John Cass College. The scholarship enabled her to travel in Europe, which she did with her husband, Jack Giles, and their first two daughters. After returning to Adelaide in 1953, Madigan sculpted, taught at the South Australian School of Art, and raised her three girls in what they recall as 'blissful creative freedom'. Following the end of her marriage in 1973, Madigan moved to Sydney where she and Klippel reconnected and formed a richly creative professional then personal partnership that lasted until Klippel’s death in 2001. She won the Wynne Prize in 1986; in 1992, Carrick Hill mounted a joint exhibition of Madigan and Klippel's work. After Klippel's death, Madigan moved to Yass, where she set up studio spaces for collage, drawing and sculpting and continued to work into her nineties. The Art Gallery of New South Wales presented a focus exhibition of Madigan’s work in 2011.
