Catalogue Raisonné. Galina IV
The Major Periods
1962 – 1965: Early Pop Paintings
As one of the original wave of Pop artists Gerald Laing produced some of the most significant works of the British Pop movement. His paintings reproduced images of popular heroes such as starlets, film stars, drag racers, astronauts and skydivers. His 1962 portrait of Brigitte Bardot is an iconic work of the period and regularly features in major Pop retrospectives alongside Lincoln Convertible from 1964, a commemoration of the assassination of JFK.
1965 – 1970: Utopian Abstract Sculpture
From 1965 Gerald Laing's painting evolved into abstract sculptures using the techniques and materials of car customisation - lacquering, spray-painting and chrome-plating on metal.
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1970 – 1973: Sculpture In The Landscape
A move from New York to the Highlands of Scotland in 1970 saw Gerald Laing's sculpture respond to the beauty, roughness and power of the surrounding landscape.
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1972 – 2010: Public Sculpture
Public sculptures include the the Bank Station Dragons; the Rugby Sculptures at Twickenham Stadium; the Cricketer at Lords; the Highland Clearances Memorial in Helmsdale, Sutherland and Axis Mundi in Edinburgh.
1973 – 1980: Galina Series
Inspired by the figurative sculpture of the First World War Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, in 1973 Gerald Laing began to model in clay and cast in bronze. The Galina Series and associated sculptures were his first works from this period.
1982 – 2007: Portrait Heads
Gerald Laing's portrait work includes heads and reliefs of Luciano Pavarotti, Andy Warhol, Paul Getty and Sam Wanamaker.
2002 – 2005: War Paintings
The Iraq war and the publication of images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison drew Gerald Laing back to painting for the first time in over three decades. The War Paintings series sees the starlets and all-American heroes of his early paintings take on new, more sinister roles.
2004 – 2011: New Paintings
Returning to the style and subject matter of his early pop art paintings, Gerald Laing's latest paintings feature media images of contemporary celebrities including Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss.
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Galina IV
Catalogue No. 313
Artist's CR 293
1973
Kinkell
Bronze
Edition of 10 bronze, plus 1 fibreglass
18 x 20 x10 inches / 46 x 51 x25 cm
- Laing Mylius Scobie, Cleish Castle, near Kinross, 1975
- Max Hutchinson Gallery, New York, 1976
- Gerald Laing: Paintings and Sculpture 1963–1983, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, 1983
- Gerald Laing: A Retrospective 1963–1993, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1993
- Gerald Laing: The Galina Series, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Inverness, 1994
- Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1968–1999, The Fine Art Society, London, 1999
- Gerald Laing: Sculpture at Chisenbury Priory, Chisenbury Priory, East Chisenbury, 2002
- Gerald Laing: From 1963 to the Present, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, 2004
- Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1965–1978, The Fine Art Society, London, 2008
- Laing Mylius Scobie, exhibition catalogue, Cleish Castle, 1975
- Gerald Laing: Paintings and Sculpture 1963–1983, exhibition catalogue, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, 1983
- Gerald Laing: A Retrospective 1963–1993, exhibition catalogue, The Fruitmarket Gallery, 1993
- Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1968–1999, exhibition catalogue, The Fine Art Society, 1999
- Gerald Laing: Sculpture at Chisenbury Priory, exhibition catalogue, Chisenbury Priory, 2002
- Gerald Laing: From 1963 to the Present, exhibition catalogue, Bourne Fine Art, 2004
- Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1965–1978, exhibition catalogue, The Fine Art Society, 2008
After this piece Laing abandoned straight lines in favour of biomorphic forms. There followed a series of variations on the head and body of his wife Galina in which Laing was seeking to find within the body a very complex system of balancing voids and solids, in deliberate contrast to the simple theme of his often repeated pyramids. These pieces are small and do not demand enlargement, in line with Laing’s disillusionment with public sculpture. However, it is clear that this sequence of pieces is only a pause and that Laing’s real interest still lies in projecting a consciousness of the human body on to a vast scale, or of finding forms that seem to convey the possibility of this dual meaning and scale within them. For when, after the series of heads and busts, he turned to a reclining female figure, it almost immediately assumed this ambiguous, half-monumental character, and was followed by others, more abstracted and like horizontal reliefs, in which Laing is quite obviously designing on an architectural scale. These works are not in the exhibition and cannot be fully discussed, except to say that they are more evidence of the true connection between the body and architecture as twin fundamentals of sculpture, and give reason to hope that Laing has not created his last Twentieth-Century Monument.
Laing Mylius Scobie: Sculpture at Cleish, Douglas Hall, exhibition catalogue, Cleish Castle, near Kinross, 1975