Born in New York City, Lipton attended Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and the College of the City of New York before enrolling at Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1927. Working first in wood and later in metal, Lipton arrived at his signature abstract expressionist style in the middle of the 20th century. In 1940 he joined the faculty at the New School for Social Research, where he would teach for 25 years. By 1955 he was working with monel, the metal alloy from which he made many of his most famous of his sculptures. He was highly successful: his work was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in the 1950s; he had a solo show at the Venice Biennale in 1958; and he received high-profile commissions, including the opportunity to produce two sculptures for the Eero Saarinen-designed IBM Watson campus. Lipton's work is in most major American museums and in collections around the world.
