STEPHEN DE STAEBLER (1933–2011)

Sculptor Stephen De Staebler passed away May 13, following complications related to cancer, at his home in Berkeley, California. He was seventy-eight. William Grimes of the New York Times writes that Staebler’s “fractured, dislocated human figures gave a modern voice and a sense of mystery to traditional realist forms.” The de Young Museum in San Francisco is currently planning a retrospective of his work.

Timothy A. Burgard, a curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and organizer of the retrospective, recalls De Staebler recently telling him that, “We are all wounded survivors, alive but devastated selves, fragmented, isolated — the condition of modern man. Art tries to restructure reality so that we can live with the suffering.”