This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Frank Gallo has worked primarily from the human form. The
sculptor was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1933, and from 1960, was professor
of sculpture at the University of Illinois. He studied art from
1951 to 1959 at the University of Toledo, Cranbrook Academy of Art,
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and the State University of Iowa.
In
the late 1950s, he began to use the material polyester resin reinforced
with fiberglass, which gives his sculpture a viscous finish.
Although he is noted for his studies of women, some of whom are
fancifully and colorfully clad, Gallo has also made sculptures of men,
including Abraham Lincoln.
Often distorting his life-like
figures Gallo has commented: "I'm obsessed with the female
figure. I get static from some women - you know, women's lib- who
say that I capitalize on them. But that's not fair. What I
express in these pieces is worship, not exploitation. I'm
interested in the beauty of the female figure, and I'm trying to
express it, the way I feel it."
In Girl on a Couch, one of us polyester resin sculptures in the collection of Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery,
we see the exaggerated breasts and the soft mounds of the stomach area
that are repeated in the soft billowy cushions of the couch. The
couch itself becomes feminine and is almost as provocative as the
woman. Gallo's use of epoxy resin signals a use of new, modern
materials and is a fitting medium because it enhances the life-like,
tactile quality of the figure and places her directly into the viewer's
space.
His work is often mildly erotic, with elongated figures
that may sit or recline in postures suggesting extremes of boredom or
self-involvement. Frank Gallo has also made lithographs, using
the same thematic material. Examples of his work are in the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. and the Los
Angeles County Art Museum.
Sources include:
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Artists
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art"
http://www.thebrogan.org/human/bios.html
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