Patrick Comerford
We spent a recent summer afternoon in Bradwell Abey last week, where I took some time to admire the art, sculpture and work of Bernard Schottlander (1924-1999). Milton Keynes has many unique works by this important member of the post-war generation of sculptors and two collections of his work in painted steel are on public display at Bradwell Abbey.
Bernard Schottlander described himself as a designer for interiors and a sculptor for exteriors. He was born in Mainz, Germany in 1924 and came to Leeds as a Jewish refugee when he fled Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in 1939. He worked as a factory welder during World War II before studying welding and sculpture at Leeds College of Art.
Later, with the help of a bursary, he studied at the Anglo-French art centre in St John’s Wood, London. He studied sculpture for a year and industrial design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in London, and his training as a welder influenced his work heavily.
He made his first abstract sculpture in the early 1960s. He opened a studio in North London with his assistant George Nash, who had learned his craft in the Royal Air Force workshops. Their work at this stage was essentially artistic in nature, seeking to explore new forms, and each piece was handmade in strictly limited editions.
He decided to concentrate solely on sculpture in 1963, and from 1965 he taught metalwork at St Martin’s School. That year he was part of the group show Six Artists at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and he had his first solo show at the Hamilton Galleries, London, in the following year (1966).
Schottlander was both an industrial designer and a sculptor. He was well known as a designer of a new style of lighting that is still regarded as modern today. He once said, ‘Sculpture is the art of silence, of objects that must speak for themselves.’
When he exhibited at Park Royal in 1972, the Milton Keynes Development Corporation chose four of his most avante garde pieces and placed them like monumental markers in the landscape designated for the new city.
He died in 1999 and his archive is at the University of Brighton Design Archives.
Bernard was fond of Milton Keynes and bequeathed his Nine Dancers to permanently ‘dance’ in Milton Keynes. The Dancers have had a tumultuous time in Milton Keynes so far.
They were originally given to enhance the Stables Laine Dankworth Centre at Wavendon, but they have moved around, were damaged in storage and were eventually restored after funding was received from Grantscape and shown temporarily at the Centre MK.
Now the Dancers and other sculptures have found a new home at the City Discovery Centre at Bradwell Abbey.
At Bradwell Abey, the Dancers have been given names that are colloquial. The interpretation panels at Bradwell Abbey explain that there is no available record of their original names.
Alongside ‘Dancing’, ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘Starbust’, they are:
The ninth dancer is ‘Father of Pearl’, also in Painted Steel
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The Architectural Sculptures form a second collection of eight works by Bernard Schottlander at Bradwell Abbey.
Once again, the names given to these sculptures are colloquial, and the interpretation panels explain that there is no available record of their original names:
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