She eventually fell in love with an Australian, the printmaker Grahame King, whom she would later marry and the two moved to Australia in 1951. They established themselves in Warrandyte and, together, dug out a studio under the Robin Boyd-designed home where they raised two daughters. Forward Surge, Inge King's best-known work, on the lawn of the Arts Centre Melbourne. Credit:Robin Whittle King has previously spoken of the impact of the Australian landscape on her work – utterly foreign to her as an emigre from Europe - her monumental sculptures seen across Melbourne, from the iconic waveform design on the lawn of the Arts Centre (Forward Surge), the majestic, shimmering rings in the grounds of the Heide Museum of Modern Art (Rings of Saturn) to the eponymous red ringed-structure on the edge of Eastlink (Red Rings). "I have always thought of sculpture on a large scale," she told Fairfax Media in 2013. "The Australian landscape fascinates me. It's vast and rough, it's untidy and how can you counter that? You can make something 10 or 20 metres high and it doesn't mean anything. It has to have power and the power comes through simplicity and inner strength." National Gallery of Victoria curator David Hurlston, who first met the sculptor as a drawing student of her husband's at RMIT University in the 1970s and coordinated a retrospective at the NGV in 2014, said King once described her first impression of Australia as "like opening a can of flat beer."

"Things were very different, the culture was one of shrine sculpture and traditional techniques," he said. King initially made jewellery to earn a living but by the 1960s had become part of a movement of contemporary sculptors called Centre 5, whose aim was to bring architectural sculpture into the public domain. Rings of Saturn at Heide. Credit:Penny Stephens King and her husband were devout supporters of each other through their careers, so much so that when Hurlston curated the NGV retrospective of her work she insisted he include some of Grahame King's pieces too. He recalls her telling him that at one point when they were in their 80s, King remarked that she and her husband were grinding steel together. "There aren't many couples our age who'd be doing this," she told him. A rare woman in a predominantly male field of heavy sculpture, Purves paid tribute to King's contribution to the arts in Australia as "unquestionably significant". If she didn't have the correct tools for her work, she'd make them, if she didn't know how to do something, she'd figure it out. Undiminished by age almost to the end, King worked actively until she was 98 years old.

"It is sad but like all these giants they leave a legacy that will leave us happy, culturally, forever," Purves said. "The wellbeing of Australia's culture is richer for her and she will be sadly missed by those that did and did not know her. Those of us that did were touched by her magic." - with Sonia Harford