GERALD LAING

The New Situation: Art in London in the Sixties

Sotheby’s
34-35 New Bond Street
London
UK

4–11 September 2013

OVERVIEW

This exciting exhibition will focus on the decade when British artists, many of them fresh out of art school, captured the world’s imagination, finding recognition and success both at home and abroad, in Europe and America and at the biennales of Venice and Sao Paulo.

From ‘Colour-Field’ and ‘Hard-Edge’ abstraction, through to Pop in its many guises, from the New Sculpture, with its minimal aesthetic and use of industrial materials and flat colour, through to the beginning of Conceptual art, The New Situation tracks a period when British art was at the forefront of global art trends.

What is truly remarkable, though, is that many of the artists of this time are now little-known to international collectors, where once museum directors and leading international gallerists considered them peers of Hockney, Riley or Caro. This exhibition reunites over 40 artists to recapture the diversity and excitement of the London scene.

The exhibition – featuring, in equal measure, works for sale and on loan - is a collaboration between Sotheby’s specialists and the legendary Sixties dealer Kasmin, whose gallery on Bond Street was the first architect-designed ‘white cube’ space in London. Here Kasmin mounted a succession of ground-breaking shows, blending American heavyweights with young British artists, including David Hockney’s first solo exhibition in 1963.

Kasmin, along with Robert Fraser and the esoteric Indica Gallery (both of whom are represented by artists in the exhibition), re-defined the context in which contemporary art was seen in Britain.  As such, Sotheby’s is honoured to have him as the curator of The New Situation.
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Gerald Laing (1936–2011)
Laing studied at Central St Martin’s and exhibited at Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (1963); ICA, London (1964); Richard Feigen Gallery, New York (1964, 1965, 1967, 1969) and Richard Feigen Gallery, Chicago (1966, 1970). He participated in important group shows including Young Contemporaries, RBA Galleries, London (1963); Biennale de Paris (1963); Primary Sculptures, Jewish Museum, New York (1966); Whitney Annual Sculpture Exhibition, Whitney Museum, New York (1968); Objects and Constructions: Selected Scottish Sculpture, Scottish Arts Council Gallery, Edinburgh (1978); The Sixties Art Scene in London, Barbican Art Gallery, London (1993) and Art and the 60’s, Tate (2004). He has works in many public collections including National Gallery, London; Tate; London, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.