The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 137

De Staebler, Stephen
American; (b. 1933, St. Louis, MO; d. 2011 Berkeley, CA)
1961 MA (art) University of California, Berkeley, CA
1959 (general secondary teaching credential) University of California, Berkeley, CA
1954 AB (religion) Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
1951 Black Mountain College, NC. Studied with Ben Shahn.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Stephen De Staebler worked primarily with ceramics.

SELECTED REFERENCES:

In the 1980s, the artist turned to bronze and worked at the San Francisco

Prescott, Theodore L., ed.

Bay Area’s Artworks Foundry alongside artists Paula Slater and Peter Voulkos.

A Broken Beauty. Grand

Whether working with clay or bronze, the human figure was central to De
Staebler’s haunting sculptural works. De Staebler’s religious training and interest in
spiritualism is evident in his looming sculptures that are built out of mounds of clay.
Occasionally exhibiting the peeling or splitting surface tension of their material,

Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.
Wood, Eve. “Northern California
Ceramics: Profiles of Six Artists,
Stephen De Staebler.” American
Ceramics 14, no. 4 (2004): 18–19.

De Staebler’s work explores the human condition through meditation on the body.
Since De Staebler’s death in 2011, two major solo exhibitions, Matter + Spirit: The
Sculpture of Stephen De Staebler at the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco
(2012) and Stephen De Staebler: The Sculptor, The Man at the Udinotti Museum
of Figurative Art in Scottsdale, Arizona (2013), were mounted in his honor.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF STEPHEN DE STAEBLER WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Standing Figure with
Quartered Torso
Kuspit, Donald. Stephen De

ALSO INCLUDED IN EXHIBITION

Winged Woman Stepping

Staebler: The Figure. San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 1987.

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