Stephen De Staebler

Stephen De Staebler (March 24, 1933 – May 13, 2011) was an internationally celebrated American sculptor, 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."

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).

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.”

When De Staebler was eight, his father met with the director of the St. Louis Art Museum to discuss his son’s burgeoning art practice. While at the museum, a bronze copy of the Hellenistic marble sculpture Laocoön and His Sons made an indelible impression on the young artist’s psyche. He subsequently signed up for painting lessons with Warren "Gus" Ludwig, an art professor of Washington University in St. Louis, and later took a private clay modeling class with Amanda Hawkins at John Burroughs School, a St. Louis prep school.

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