GERALD LAING

Galina IV

Catalogue raisonné no. 313

Artist's CR 293

1973

Kinkell

Bronze

Edition of 10 bronze, plus 1 fibreglass

18 x 20 x10 inches / 0 cm

Exhibitions:
• Laing Mylius Scobie, Cleish Castle, near Kinross, 1975
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• Max Hutchinson Gallery, New York, 1976
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• Gerald Laing: Paintings and Sculpture 1963–1983, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, 1983
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• Gerald Laing: A Retrospective 1963–1993, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1993
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• Gerald Laing: The Galina Series, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Inverness, 1994
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• Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1968–1999, The Fine Art Society, London, 1999
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• Gerald Laing: Sculpture at Chisenbury Priory, Chisenbury Priory, East Chisenbury, 2002
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• Gerald Laing: From 1963 to the Present, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, 2004
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• Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1965–1978, The Fine Art Society, London, 2008
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Literature:
• Laing Mylius Scobie, exhibition catalogue, Cleish Castle, 1975
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• Gerald Laing: Paintings and Sculpture 1963–1983, exhibition catalogue, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, 1983
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• Gerald Laing: A Retrospective 1963–1993, exhibition catalogue, The Fruitmarket Gallery, 1993
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• Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1968–1999, exhibition catalogue, The Fine Art Society, 1999
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• Gerald Laing: Sculpture at Chisenbury Priory, exhibition catalogue, Chisenbury Priory, 2002
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• Gerald Laing: From 1963 to the Present, exhibition catalogue, Bourne Fine Art, 2004
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• Gerald Laing: Sculpture 1965–1978, exhibition catalogue, The Fine Art Society, 2008
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Selected Citations and Comments

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.

Douglas Hall, Laing Mylius Scobie: Sculpture at Cleish, exhibition catalogue, Cleish Castle, near Kinross, 1975