About
Courtesy of Dolby Chadwick Gallery and the Estate of Stephen De Staebler.
The fractured human form has long been a subject for acclaimed American sculptor Stephen De Staebler. As with many of his works, One Legged Woman Standing recalls the fragmented remains of figurative sculpture from classical antiquity. The incomplete figure registers the vulnerability of the human body—the cataclysmic effects of time, disease, and war—as well as the modern existential experience of the individual who feels psychically and spiritually fragmented. Balancing atop one leg, it also alludes to human endurance and tenacity.
De Staebler’s One Legged Woman Standing finds a home among a classical depiction of the allegory of the Four Seasons, replacing a figure destroyed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake