THE death of Norman Stevens, at the age of only 51 in 1988, was a great loss not only to art, as a forthcoming exhibition, book and catalogue raisonné will demonstrate, but to anyone who came across him; his Times obituary stressed his concern for ‘a friend in difficulties, an artist neglected, or for the public good’.
His widow, Jean, remembers his ‘great sense of humour’ and his love of gardens and conservation: ‘He was always getting people together to protest about old buildings being knocked down.’ At Rugby Mansions, London W14, where the Stevenses lived latterly, he turned the communal backyard into a garden, with a fountain by Ainsley Yule and wall sculpture by Nigel Hall; it is named in his memory.
Catalogues raisonné tend. It is an apt title, because printmaking as an art and shadow as a subject became Stevens’s obsession.
