Gyöngy Laky (b.1944 Budapest, Hungary) is a sculptor living and working in San Francisco, California. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally. Her work has been included in exhibitions in Canada, Denmark, Sweden, England, Holland, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Italy, Columbia, Philippines, Japan and China. Laky has participated in the US Federal Art in Embassies Program in Bangkok, Thailand; NATO, Brussels, Belgium, Poland and with a permanent artwork in the Kosovo Embassy. In addition to solo exhibitions in the U.S., she has had solo exhibitions in England, Denmark, Hungary and Spain.
A comprehensive discussion and presentation of her life and art was published by arnoldsche, Germany, (328 pages) in 2022: Gyöngy Laky: Screwing with
Order, assembled art actions and creative practice,
designed by Tom Grotta and edited by Rhonda Brown with essays by
Mija Riedel and David M. Roth and a foreword by Jim Melchert.
Laky’s work is in a number of permanent public and museum collections including The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock AR; The Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (de Young); Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA; LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton, NY; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, Monterey, CA; Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Long Beach Museum, Long Beach, CA; The Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; George Washington University Museum, Washington DC; U. S. State Department, Kosovo Embassy; and abroad: Government of India; Paisley Museum, Paisley, Scotland (Contemporary Art Society of London purchase); Central Museum of Textiles, Poland and Savaria Museum, Szombathely, Hungary and Nationalmuseum of Sweden. Her work is also in several corporate collections.
Laky created a large work commissioned by the Federal
Art-in-Architecture Program for the Social Security Administration
Building in Richmond, CA and another for the City Council Chambers in
Sacramento, CA.
She is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant; Award of Distinction, 11th International Triennial of Tapestry, Central Museum of Textiles, Lodz, Poland; and Award for Artistic Excellence, Women in the Arts, The Women's Foundation, San Francisco, CA.
In 2002-03, she was one of a team of three to develop a comprehensive Arts Master Plan for the new state-of-the-art, US Federal Food and Drug Administration campus being built in Maryland.
In 2003, a book, "Portfolio Series: Gyöngy Laky," was published by Telos Arts Publishing, UK, and the Bancroft Library at UC, Berkeley, released her oral history. Her personal papers are in the Smithsonian Institution‘s Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. Laky’s art has appeared in numerous books, magazines, catalogs and newspapers in the US and abroad. April 2008, the New York Times Magazine commissioned her to create titles for its environmental issue (the titles received an award from the Type Directors Club).
Laky also creates site-specific works. Some of these temporary works occurred in Bulgaria, Austria, Wustum, MA; California State University, Chico, CA; Ness Gardens with University of Liverpool, England; a site-specific work commissioned for the international conference, “Landscape and Sculpture,” organized by Littoral and Manchester Polytechnic, Manchester, England; Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; and Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France. Her most recent outdoor, temporary, a site-specific works (2) were for "Humus Park," 5TH International Land Art, Pordenone, Italy, May, 2016.
As of 2005, Laky is Professor Emeritus of University of California, Davis, (chair, Department of Art mid-1990s). Both her undergraduate and graduate studies were pursued at UC Berkeley. Postgraduate work followed with the UC Professional Studies in India Program. Upon her return from India, she founded the internationally recognized Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts, where she established accredited undergraduate and graduate programs in the mid-1970's. She joined the faculty at UCD in 1978 and soon after initiated establishing the independent Department of Environmental Design. In the early 1990's she developed a graduate program. As of the late 1990's, Laky, a strong advocate for environmental sustainability curricula, initiated a number of courses regarding environmental issues, converting classes to focus on sustainability in art and design.
