Frank Gallo

Gallo graduated from the University of Toledo and received his M.F.A. from the State University of Iowa. During the mid 1950s he studied further at Cranbrook Academy and worked with printmaker Mauricio Lasansky. A sculptor who teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Gallo worked for many years in epoxy resin and received wide critical acclaim, especially for his figures of women, when his work was exhibited in the 1968 Venice Biennale. Although the media he uses would allow him to depict the physical qualities of his models to the tiniest detail, Gallo instead chooses hard, shiny surfaces that remain several times removed from the realism of his subjects. In a number of pieces, Gallo has further denied naturalism by creating shell-like figures whose flatness is emphasized by surface scratching. Gallo's enduring debt to Lasansky is apparent in the graphic surface quality of his earlier work as well as in his recent low reliefs.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)