Stephen De Staebler

From January 14 - April 22, 2012, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco presented the first major retrospective of the artist's work at M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. Entitled “Matter + Spirit: Stephen De Staebler,” the exhibition was accompanied by a monograph, "Matter + Spirit: Stephen De Staebler", which included essays by Timothy Anglin Burgard ("Stephen De Staebler: Humanist Sculptor in an Existentialist Age"), Rick Newby, and Dore Ashton, as well as a chronology of the artist's life.

In 2011, De Staebler died of complications from cancer in Berkeley, California, at the age of 78.

In a 1995 interview, De Stabeler explained how “working with the figure on its sculptural ground is like the figure/ground problem in painting, the relationship of the figure or object to the space around it […] when I shifted from clay to bronze, I learned quickly that the reason I needed bronze was to separate the figure even further from the ground and let it stand on its own form, which isn’t possible in clay. Bronze offers this great freedom to cantilever masses.”

Rather than being restricted to making bottom-heavy figures, as was often required by clay, bronze allowed De Staebler to create more gravity-defying sculptures that, with their gracefully attenuated legs, appear to exist on the cusp of collapse. While wing-like shapes were not novel to De Staebler's art, this new material precipitated a greater, more involved investigation of wings and their various symbolic manifestations within the realms of mythology, religion, the animal kingdom and nature. Notable winged figures include Winged Woman Walking (1987); Winged Victory at the Moores Opera House in the University of Houston; and Three Figures, City Center, Oakland, amongst others.

De Staebler's honors and awards include two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, 1979 and 1981; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1983; American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Art, 1989; the Nobukata-Shikanai Special Prize and 4th Rodin Grand Prize Exhibition, Utsukushi-ga-hari Open Air Museum, Japan, 1992; and American Craft Council Fellow, 1994.

In the late 1970s, De Staebler turned to bronze after an injury temporarily curtailed his ability to create large-scale, ceramic figure columns. His interest in such a classical art historical medium might strike as counterintuitive, however De Staebler adapted the casting process to reflect his more deconstructed, liberated approach to art-making.

In 1968, De Staebler participated in various “Happenings” around campus and conducted classes off-site, to protect students from police squads that had been stationed on campus during anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

In 1963, De Staebler was commissioned to create Moab I for Prudential Savings and Loan in Salt Lake City, Utah, now in the collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Five years later, in 1968, De Staebler completed an important commission for the Holy Spirit Chapel, Newman Hall (on U.C. Berkeley's campus) for which he was tasked with creating the altar, tabernacle, crucifix, lectern and celebrant's chair. Subsequent commissions included:

After pursuing his graduate studies at Berkeley, De Staebler briefly taught at San Francisco State University before accepting a teaching position at the San Francisco Art Institute (1961 to 1967). In 1967, De Staebler returned to S.F. State where he taught until his retirement in 1990. During his tenure he worked with such notable colleagues as Peter Vandenberg, John Gutmann, Robert Bechtle, Richard McClean, Leonard Hunter, and Neal White.

In 1957, he attended ceramics classes at Brooklyn Museum Art School, studying under Ka Kwong Hui. Soon after returning to the States, De Staebler moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with his first wife, Dona Merced Curley, earning a teaching credential in secondary education followed by a master’s degree in fine art from University of California, Berkeley in 1961. While at Berkeley, De Staebler studied under Peter Voulkos, a renowned abstract sculptor who flouted ceramic’s categorization as mere craft, elevating it to the realm of the fine arts. Voulkos’ emphasis on clay's organic properties and expressive potential deeply influenced De Staebler and reactivated his childhood affinity for nature.

In 1952, De Staebler traveled to Europe aboard the Greek freighter “The Atlantic Beacon.” Once in Europe, he visited cities across Italy (Genoa, Pisa, Sienna, Rome, Assisi, Padua, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Milan), Switzerland (Berne and Basel), France (Paris, Chartres) and England (London) where he was exposed to canonical works of art and architecture, including Chartres Cathedral and iconic sculptures such as the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican Museums in Rome, Michelangelo's unfinished Captives at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, the Rondanini Pietà at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre in Paris, and the Three Goddesses from the Parthenon at the British Museum in London. Two years after this cultural pilgrimage, De Staebler graduated from Princeton magna cum laude with a degree in Religious Studies. His senior thesis, “St. Francis of Assisi and His Imitation of Christ,” explored the life and work of the much venerated founder of the Franciscan Order.

De Staebler matriculated at Princeton University in 1950, where he studied archeology, art history and religion. Joe Brown, a former professional boxer recognized for his sculptures of sports figures, served as De Staebler's mentor during this stage of his education. Following his freshman year, De Staebler attended summer session at Black Mountain College in Black Mountain, North Carolina, where he studied with the social realist Ben Shahn. Other guest faculty at this time included Robert Motherwell and David Tudor.

Stephen De Staebler (March 24, 1933 – May 13, 2011) was an American sculptor, printmaker, and educator, he was best recognized for his work in clay and bronze. Totemic and fragmented in form, De Staebler's figurative sculptures call forth the many contingencies of the human condition, such as resiliency and fragility, growth and decay, earthly boundedness and the possibility for spiritual transcendence. An important figure in the California Clay Movement, he is credited with "sustaining the figurative tradition in post-World War II decades when the relevance and even possibility of embracing the human figure seemed problematic at best."

Many of De Staebler's childhood summers were spent on his maternal grandparents’ 775-acre farm in rural Shoals, Indiana. The lodging, which he shared with his mother and siblings, Herbert Conrad "Hobey" Jr. (1929–2008) and Juliette Jeanne "Jan" (1931–2006), was a rustic cabin built next to the bluffs of the White River. This early immersion in the natural world shaped the artist's developing aesthetic. De Staebler said, “I fell in love with the river that winds around our family farm in Indiana. It is bordered by a bluff intricately carved by water and wind. It has caves and natural stairways up fissures just wide enough to squeeze through. I sometimes think that my impulses were all formed as a child there.”

De Staebler was born in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and spent his childhood in the nearby suburb of Kirkwood. From an early age, he was encouraged to develop his artistic interests by his parents, Herbert Conrad De Staebler (1898–1963) and Juliette Hoiles De Staebler (1903–1950).