GERALD LAING

A catalogue raisonné  of Gerald Laing’s paintings, sculpture and prints has been published by the artist’s estate and Lund Humphries.

The catalogue includes new essays on Laing’s life, Pop paintings, late paintings, prints, abstract sculpture and figurative sculpture.

A major exhibition of British Pop Art at the Kunstmusem Wolfsburg opens on 30 October 2016 and runs until 19 February 2017.

This Was Tomorrow: Pop Art in Great Britain features a number of Gerald Laing’s works from the early sixties are shown, including Souvenir, Anna Karina , Skydiver VIII, C.T. Strokers and Lincoln Convertible alongside works by Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, Patrick Caulfield, Antony Donaldson, Jann Hawortha, David Hockney, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj, Peter Phillips, Colin Self, Richard Smith and Joe Tilson.

Gerald Laing’s 1964 painting Beach Wear has sold at Christies, King Street, for £1,565,000. This exceeded the estimate and set a new record for Laing’s paintings.

The Fine Art Society presents the first major retrospective, featuring paintings, sculptures and prints spanning the entire career of the British pop artist and sculptor Gerald Laing (1936 - 2011), on the fifth anniversary of his death.

Considered one of the most important artists of his generation, Gerald Laing is one of the few pop artists to cross both the UK and US movements. Laing helped to define the visual language of the 1960s with huge canvases based on newspaper photographs of famous models, astronauts and film stars. His most famous work, Brigitte Bardot (1962), has become an icon of the decade.

The Fine Art Society’s exhibition will reflect all phases of Laing’s career starting from the early pop paintings he produced while he was still a student at St Martin’s School of Art in London in the 1960s including a monumental portrait of the French film star and wife of director Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina.

The exhibition will be open on Saturday 24th September, Saturday 1st and Saturday 8th October from 11am - 2pm

Lincoln Convertible, the only known contemporary painting of the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963, has gone on display at Tate Britain in London to mark the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s death on 22nd November 1963. The painting, currently owned by the artist’s estate, is on loan to Tate. It recently featured in ‘When Britain went Pop’, the acclaimed show of British Pop Art at Christiies’ new Mayfair gallery. The artist viewed it as one of his most significant works.

Gerald Laing’s striking image of Brigitte Bardot, painted while still a student at St Martin’s College in the 1960s and perfectly capturing the spirit of the age, sold at auctioneer Christie’s in London yesterday evening for a record £902,500, far in excess of any previous price paid for one of Laing’s works. Laing originally sold the painting to a private collector soon after it was created in 1963 for £40, and although widely exhibited, it had remained with the same owner since then.