Page 46 - Studio International - October 1965

Stephen G i I bert curvilinear constructions

by Charles S. Spencer

1 It is a fascinating, and not altogether irrelevant fact, that In his Cobra days he retained elements of figuration
Scructure 228, June 1962
Unpolished aluminium Stephen Gilbert's grandfather was the sculptor and and used strong colour. but gradually he moved through
64 ems. metalworker Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934). famous for abstract-expressionism to a more formal geometrical
Hamilton Gallenes
the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain (Eros) in Piccadilly, style influenced by Mondrian and Malevitch. It was. in
2 the first statue to be cast in aluminium, as well as one fact, a return to architectural form, which was later
Scructure 14C, 1962
Aluminium of the leading figures in the British Art Nouveau reinforced when he teamed up with the well-known
30 ems. movement. His grandson has achieved distinction as experimental builder Peter Stead, of Huddersfield, in a
Hamilton Gallenes
the most prominent contemporary British sculptor project for modular metal houses. Working along
3
Scrueture 388. 1964 working in aluminium. whose curvilinear, organic strictly theoretical lines, in space. form and colour. the
Brass forms are reminiscent of. if not directly derived from houses were designed in aluminium. Although this
50 x 35 ems
Hamilton Gallenes the sinuous origins of Art Nouveau. brave venture was clearly doomed commercially, it
Stephen Gilbert was born in Scotland in 1910 and his convinced Gilbert of his need to work in three dimen­
original training in architecture, at University College, sions. Painting was abandoned and a period of recti­
London. has been the most important single foundation linear, orthogonal space-construction was initiated.
of his mature achievement. On the advice of Henry but soon left behind. Whilst he admires the courage and
Tonks he abandoned architecture for painting and inventiveness of the early Constructivists, he finds the
became a Slade Scholar in 1930. It has taken Gilbert a relationship of Horizontal and Vertical in art. authori­
long time to discover and develop an individual manner tarian and unreal. 'It is a man-made conception'. he
and expression; he speaks of having been 'led cJstray', feels, 'never found in nature-a case of man attempting
of having worked ·against the current' for a long period to dominate nature. Everything in nature, everything
before concentrating on curvilinear. aluminium com­ cosmic, is in fact curved'. The orthogonal concept 'is
positions some seven years ago. almost entirely theoretical-scientific, absolute, as in
A small. reserved man. with the manner and appear­ the cube'. Gilbert declines final. dogmatic statements
ance of a backroom scientist or remote university don, in art. He wants his forms to be evocative, to investigate
rather than an artist, it is difficult to imagine him as a relationships in space, as well as in the eye and mind
member of the aggressive Cobra Group. Yet, in fact, he of the viewer. It is an art of subtle formality. poetic
1

was one of the founders of this famous band of Expres­ rather than clinical. organic rather than static.
sionist painters, largely through his long-standing Constructivism he sees as 'the first wave of spatial
friendship with the painter Asger Jorn. The influence discovery· and appreciates that within their fixed limits
of Cezanne in his student days led Gilbert towards the great experimentalists of the beginning of the
abstraction and Paris, where he first settled in 1938. century advanced as far as was possible. But the
After the war. in 1 945. he returned to the city where limitations were eventually stifling, and in the sense
he has lived ever since, although he now finds he has described, unnatural.
little in common with artists working there or the general Whilst he never imitates or recreates a shape in nature,
Parisian art scene. 'being part of nature· he is aware that 'there is bound to
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