Gerald Laing was educated at Berkhamsted School, an independent school in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, and attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and served with the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers as a lieutenant in Ireland and Germany.
10 Facts About Gerald Laing
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Gerald Laing soon realized that the military was not what he was looking for and attended Saint Martin's School of Art in London.
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At the beginning of the 1960s, while still at Saint Martin's, Gerald Laing was introduced to artists in New York City, meeting Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Rosenquist and Robert Indiana.
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Gerald Laing's career took him from the avant-garde world of 1960s pop art, through minimalist sculpture, followed by representational sculpture and then back full circle to his pop art roots.
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Gerald Laing taught sculpture at the University of New Mexico and at Columbia University in New York City.
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Gerald Laing did a series of anti-war paintings, based primarily on photographs from the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.
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On 19 February 2012 a bronze sculpture by Gerald Laing, Dreamer, was stolen from Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.
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Gerald Laing was married three times and was the father of six children.
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Adaline, with whom he had two more sons, is the sister of Rodney Frelinghuysen, a former US Representative, and a granddaughter of the prominent New Jersey lawyer and banker Peter Hood Ballantine Frelinghuysen I Laing fathered his sixth child with Alison Urquhart in 2002.
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Gerald Laing died on 23 November 2011 at his home, Kinkell Castle.