Bernard Schottlander

Bernard Schottlander (1924-1999) was a British artist and designer of German origins. Born in Mainz, in 1939 he was forced to take refuge in England to escape the Nazi regime and spent the war years there working as a welder in a factory, thus developing a familiarity with metallic materials that would accompany him throughout his life. Schottlander later studied sculpture in Leeds and London, specializing in monumental metal sculptures for open spaces, abstract creations in search of new geometric forms and rich dynamism. Throughout the 1950s he combined his work as a sculptor and as a designer, for which he is mainly remembered today. In particular, his lamps from the Mantis series (1951) were very successful, inspired by the play of unstable balances at the basis of Alexander Calder's art and now re-proposed by the French brand DCW éditions.