Gerald Laing 1936-2011
“…the breast is a perfect demi-pyramid; one shoulder is organic and tender; one is geometric. The true vertical line up the centre of the work which ends in a depressed oval which refers to the soft indentation of the temple, is at the same time a conscious homage to Picasso’s Femme-Fleur. The heads, however, beginning with Galina I, are derived from comic heroes such as the Silver Surfer (who rode the stratosphere looking down and murmuring to himself, ‘Alas what fools these mortals be’). And these comic images have, of course, roots in Japanese art and applied art, and probably run much deeper than that into the elemental human psyche.”
In the four years following Galina I, a further eight sculptures were made for the series at Kinkell, in Amagansett, Long Island, and in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Laing spent a year at the University as Visiting Professor of Painting and Sculpture.