| Ron Robertson-Swann | |
| Birth Name: | Ronald Charles Robertson-Swann |
| Birth Date: | 20 February 1941 |
| Birth Place: | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Nationality: | Australian |
| Field: | Sculpture |
| Training: | Saint Martin's School of Art, London |
| Works: | |
| Awards: | Order of Australia Medal (OAM) |
Ronald Charles Robertson-Swann (born 20 February 1941)[1] is an Australian sculptor, best known for his controversial abstract public sculpture Vault (1980), located in Melbourne. He is also known for the sculpture Leviathan Play (1985), located in Brisbane.[2] [3] [4]
Vault has been described as being in the Anthony Caro style,[5] which he adopted after studying at Saint Martin's School of Art, London, in the 1960s. He studied under Lyndon Dadswell and was an assistant to Henry Moore.[6] He is Head of Sculpture at the National Art School and is the artistic adviser to the popular annual exhibition Sculpture by the Sea.[7] He was a founding member of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council[8] and has won numerous awards including the Comalco Invitational Sculpture Award, the Transfeld Prize and the Alice Prize.
Graeme Sturgeon, the pre-eminent Australian sculpture historian and critic, described Robertson-Swann in 1980 as "the most consistent of the Classic Formalist, that is, the one most concerned to produce a sculpture which, while obviously of its era, transcends considerations of style in search of a timeless sense of rightness."