Gladys Blaiberg

Description

Gladys Blaiberg was born to Welsh parents in 1882. Her family moved to London when Blaiberg was aged 12. In her late teens she won a scholarship to art school and there she studied painting and sculpture. She was inspired to work with paper after visiting an exhibition of hand-made paper flowers in 1903. Early on she experimented with modelling the human form in paper, and from the start she caricatured her friends as well as theatrical identities of the day.

Blaiberg came into contact with Australian soldiers at the Australian forces canteen in London, where she volunteered during the First World War. Her empathy with the diggers made them a favourite subject of her work. Using steel armatures, cotton wool padding, paper and wood, she created vivid, humorous three dimensional depictions of their experiences on the home front and behind the lines. She recreated the detail of uniforms accurately and finished the faces with pen, ink and watercolour. Blaiberg exhibited her models in her London studio, partly for the entertainment of Australian soldiers.

After the war she focused on theatrical models, which are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, until the 1930s world political scene provided her with a chance to explore some darker satire, modelling figures of Hitler and Goering. During the Second World War she worked as a volunteer making camouflage.

In the 1950s and '60s she returned to the light-hearted mood of her earlier works, modelling socialites, tennis players and dancers. In her later years she suffered from arthritis and was unable to work. She died in 1969 at the age of 86.

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