Earlier years

Gerda was born in Berlin,1931. Her family moved to Amsterdam two years later after she was born. In 1940, her father, Willem Rubinstein, an outerwear designer and garment-maker, was taken by the Nazis to Auschwitz concentration camp, 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 World War II and the privations of the Dutch famine of 1944–1945. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Gerda always had a tremendously positive outlook on life.

The sense of positivity is expressed in her own words on her website: "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.^[8]"

After World War II

After the war, Gerda attended the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten 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 (Amsterdam) in Amsterdam.

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

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.

Later years

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.

Working Process

The sculptures Gerda makes have developed from early carving in stone and then refractory brick, in which she carved negative shapes into which bronze was poured, to modelling in wax for small work or in clay for larger pieces, which are then cast in bronze or occasionally in cement or resin.^[10]