With their allusions to antiquity and corroding human forms, De Staebler’s iconic sculptures powerfully activated the secluded grounds of the Villa Montalvo Arts Center, an Italianate villa and public park nestled into the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains in Saratoga...… read more

With their allusions to antiquity and corroding human forms, Stephen De Staebler’s iconic sculptures (1933-2011) powerfully activate the secluded grounds of the Villa Montalvo Arts Center, an Italianate villa and public park nestled into the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains in Saratoga. Whether stationed on the villa’s lawns, its great veranda, or in the beckoning gardens, the settings for De Staebler’s five life-sized bronze sculptures are perfect.… read more

Victory against all odds appears to be one operating metaphor in “Metaphoric States: Five Bronze Works by Stephen De Staebler” at Montalvo Arts Center through Oct. 1. De Staebler’s 2010 bronze “Winged Figure Ascending” seems like that idea’s most obvious realization — the Greek goddess Nike as a Brutalist angel readying for takeoff in front of Montalvo’s villa.… read more

Titled "Two Geologies," this exhibition paired the materially and geologically driven works of American sculptor Stephen De Staebler (1933-2011) with recent paintings by his widow, Danae Mattes.… read more

Stephen De Staebler died in 2011 at age 78, but not before he was privy to arrangements being made for his retrospective at the De Young the following year, “Matter + Spirit: The Sculpture of Stephen De Staebler.” A student of Theology schooled at Princeton University (BA 1954), he attended summer classes at legendary Black Mountain College, and later studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to the production of his own art, he was a professor at The San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University, inspiring a new generation of clay artists.… read more

It’s a familiar phrase, but rarely does it seem as apt as when it describes Stephen De Staebler’s move to the Bay Area in 1958. With a bachelor’s in religion from Princeton and two years of Army service under his belt, the artistic 25-year-old enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, planning to earn a secondary-school teaching degree. He did, but three other things happened, too. He took a figure modeling class, prompting him to get his master’s in fine art. Meanwhile the area’s topography was reawakening a childhood fascination with landscape and terrain. And in 1959, Peter Voulkos showed up.… read more

Squarecylinder highlights Stephen De Stabler at Dolby Chadwick's booth for Art MRKT May 20-13, 2012.… read more

I once walked into a small gallery under the roof of the Musée Maillol in Paris and found myself surrounded by a dozen of the French artist’s nude women in bronze. The iconic broad-shouldered figures startled me, arrested my movement. It is common in American museums to see one or two Maillols in a room—to be intrigued by their beauty, the power and grace of their form, the intensity of their gaze—but it is rare to be cornered by a posse of them.… read more

I'm not attracted to formal religion, but I am drawn to the questions that religion tries to deal with: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Those questions will never be answered in any final way. While you're alive here on earth, you can ignore them or you can try to deal with them.… read more

From the dark and mangled Stephen DeStaebler sculpture that stands at attention near 251 Third St., just 20 seconds of walking will bring you to the Keith Haring dancers on the opposite corner of Howard Street. Haring's work lifts people. On a recent evening, I witnessed a couple saunter toward Haring's giant figures and then stop directly in front, where they kissed and sweet-nothinged each other for minutes. In front of DeStaebler's Man with Flame, meanwhile, no one kissed, laughed, or demonstrated anything resembling joy.… read more

The title "Matter + Spirit: The Sculpture of Stephen DeStaebler" sounds like conventional museum curator's lingo. But it fits very well the two-room exhibition at the de Young Museum that it names.… read more

Visitors who enter an exhibition like that of Stephen DeStaebler's bronzes at the Dolby Chadwick Gallery get the impression that it all came together effortlessly. But logistical headaches often lie behind the seamless look of such a show.… read more

Stephen DeStaebler: In mid-January, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum will open "Matter + Spirit: The Sculpture of Stephen DeStaebler," a posthumous survey of the Bay Area sculptor's work. Meanwhile, a gallery show featuring some of the last sculptures he made offers a foretaste of his techniques and creative thinking at their apex.… read more

Stephen De Staebler, a sculptor whose fractured, dislocated human figures gave a modern voice and a sense of mystery to traditional realist forms, died on May 13 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 78.… read more

Stephen DeStaebler, a Bay Area sculptor of international renown, died at his Berkeley home Friday from complications of cancer. He was 78. Mr. De Staebler, like his mentor Peter Voulkos (1924-2002), helped to reposition ceramic materials and techniques from the critical abjection of "mere craft" to media of major ambition in contemporary sculpture. Mr. De Staebler later extended his formal innovations into the more durable medium of cast bronze, which suited his many public commissions.… read more

Art historian and museum director emeritus Peter Selz, now in his 90s, has a longer view than most of what has persisted and what has expired in the art of several generations past. So his choice of "Heads" as the theme of the show he assembled for Dolby Chadwick warrants serious reflection. Significantly, Selz sidelines the notion of portraiture, although several things on view announce themselves as portraits or self-portraits. "Heads" encompasses both living and dead, portrait and mask, individual and symbol.… read more

For almost fifty years Stephen de Staebler has been engaged in building fractured human figures made of clay, which, he points out, is the crust of the earth (Latin for terra-cotta). He was introduced to clay at Berkeley in 1958 and studied with Pete Voulkos, the master of clay, and, like Pete, he built his own kiln and was on his way. He was mesmerized by the resistance of the material during the process of shaping it and by the unpredictability of the result when the work was fired. Like the Abstract Expressionist painters, de Staebler welcomed the element of chance.… read more

John Toki encouraged me (Richard Whittaker) to interview his old friend and mentor, sculptor Stephen DeStaebler. The following conversation is distilled from three meetings with the artist at his home and studio.… read more