Gerda Rubinstein (1931–2022)

Sculptor and teacher born in Berlin, one of the three children of Willem Rubinstein, a Jewish clothes designer and his Christian wife, Hanne (née Hamm). The family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 to escape the Nazis, but in 1940, following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, Willem Rubinstein was sent to Auschwitz, where he died. His wife and his three children, who had been christened, survived the war and continued to live in Amsterdam. Gerda Rubinstein later wrote: ‘I have come to realise 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 a brief period working in a pottery, in 1948 she was taken on as a pupil by the Amsterdam-based sculptor Wessel Couzijn. In the following year she gained admission to Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie and in 1952 was awarded a grant to study under Ossip Zadkine at L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris, where she was awarded the Prix Jeune Sculpture. Following her return to the Netherlands, she won two major commissions, a carving in stone unveiled in Ijmuiden in 1956, and Spelende kinderen (Children Playing), 1957–58, a sculpture in bronze for the Oosterpark, Amsterdam. On a trip to London in 1958, she met Christopher Stevens, an architect; the couple married in 1959 and settled in Blackheath, south London. In 1967, Patricia Fox Edwards saw Rubinstein’s work and recommended it to the Harlow Art Trust for Harlow New Town, which had been under development by her future husband, the architect Frederick Gibberd (they were to marry in 1972), since 1946. Rubinstein’s sculptures at Harlow include City, 1970, bronze (part stolen in 2003); a bust of Sir Frederick Gibberd, 1979, bronze, Gibberd Gallery, Civic Centre; Baby, 1992, coloured bronze resin, William Martin Infant School, Bush Fair (gift of the artist to Harlow Art Trust); Julia, 1995, bronze, Sewell Harris Close; and Screen, 1999, bronze, Harlow Civic Centre.  In addition, examples of Rubinstein’s sculpture were acquired for Harlow’s Gibberd Garden, including two gate post eagles in ciment fondu (1973); a concrete relief tondo of Frederick Gibberd working at his desk while his wife weeds the garden; and a fibreglass female nude entitled Lucinda. Other public commissions include The Picnic, Conington Road, Lewisham, south London, 1988; Arctic Terns, bronze, Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley, West Midlands, 1989; and Pensive Girl, bronze resin, outside Lewisham Town Hall, Catford, south London, 1992. Sixteen of her works were acquired for the collection of the Leicestershire Education Authority. Rubinstein showed at the Royal Academy, 1972–96, and in a number of mixed and solo exhibitions both in the UK and abroad. She also taught sculpture, at the Inner London Education Authority’s adult education institutes in Lewisham and Greenwich, from 1967 until her retirement in 1996.

Original sources include: information from the sculptor

Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 132–33, 156–57, 459; Guardian online, 25 May 2022 (obituary); D. Olsen (ed.), Sculpture in Harlow, Harlow Art Trust, 2005, pp. 11, 82–85, 106, 109; Gerda Rubinstein website.

Terry Cavanagh, 2007; revised September 2024