Klopcanovs was born in 1912 in Tashkent, the capital city of present-day Uzbekistan. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Riga, Latvia, and the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Klopcanovs joined the Linnware Ceramic Studio in South Africa in 1948. Later that year he and his wife Elma Vestman left Linnware and set up the Kalahari Studio in Bramley, Johannesburg. In July 1950, the couple rel