Bernard Schottlander

Bernard Schottlander is a designer born in 1924 in Mainz, Germany. He arrived in England in 1939 and during the war, he worked in structural engineering as a welder. He then took sculpture courses at Leeds College of Art, then on a scholarship from the Anglo-French Art Centre in St John's Wood; he studied sculpture for a year in London. His training as a welder will play a considerable role in his work.
Bernard Schottlander defines himself as an interior designer and an exterior sculptor. He built his workshop in London with the help of his assistant George Nash.
In 1963, he decided to focus solely on sculpture, and from 1965 he taught metalworking at St Martins School. That same year, he exhibited with the group Six Artists at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. In 1966, he made his first exhibition at the Hamilton Galleries in London.
Movement is the source of inspiration for all Schottlander's work: artist, engineer and do-it-yourselfer, he develops a clever pivot-counterweight system, and uses flexible and resistant metal rods. His lights, playing on the tension between balance and imbalance, drawing the secrets of emptiness and fullness, like mobiles, seem to defy the laws of weightlessness. The poetry of the object invites you to dream: elegance on a thread...