arts and design

Gerda Rubinstein obituary

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My mother, Gerda Rubinstein Stevens (she used her maiden name for her work), who has died aged 90, had a long and prolific career as a sculptor, first in the Netherlands and then in the UK.

Gerda was born in Berlin; two years later, in 1933, the family moved to Amsterdam. In 1940, her father, Willem Rubinstein, an outerwear designer and garment-maker, was taken by the Nazis to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he died.

Since her mother, Hanne (nee Hamm), who was her husband’s PA and then a partner in his firm, was not Jewish, and their three children had been christened, they survived the second world war and the privations of the 1944 Dutch Hunger Winter. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Gerda always had a tremendously positive outlook on life.

Much later, she wrote on her website that “the sense of freedom and hope that I experienced as a teenager in Holland, after five years of occupation, has never really left me and still colours my work”.

After the war, Gerda attended the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam and was awarded a grant to study in Paris, under Ossip Zadkine. Returning to the Netherlands, Gerda’s first major commission was for a carving in stone, unveiled in IJmuiden in 1956, followed by Children Playing, a sculpture in bronze for the Oosterpark in Amsterdam, which is still much loved today.

Gerda Rubinstein working on City, a 1970 commission for Harlow new town
Gerda Rubinstein working on City, a 1970 commission for Harlow new town

In 1958, on a visit to London, she met Christopher Stevens, an architect. They married in 1959 and moved to Blackheath, where Gerda quickly became involved in the Blackheath Art Society, making many friends.

An introduction to Sir Frederick Gibberd, the architect and landscape designer, led to commissions for several pieces for Harlow new town, in Essex, and the Gibberd Garden. Gerda exhibited regularly throughout her career, finding inspiration all around her. Her work can be found in many private collections, with further public commissions in Utrecht, Dudley, London, Watford and Bielefeld, Germany.

From 1967 until her retirement in 1996 at the age of 65, Gerda taught sculpture at the Inner London Education Authority’s adult education institutes in Lewisham and Greenwich. She was an inspiring teacher, and her classes, as she said, were open to students from 18 to 80; many became close friends and several went on to become professional artists, thanks to her generosity of her time and expertise. She didn’t want to retire but it was mandatory as an Ilea employee.

After moving to Reigate, Surrey, in 2008, she continued to work in her garden studio well into her 80s. In recent years, she had become less mobile and her memory deteriorated. But she never lost her positivity.

Gerda is survived by Christopher, me and her grandson, JJ.

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