TERRE HAUTE — Gopalan Contemporary Art will exhibit a retrospective of the artwork of John Laska, a collection of paintings, drawings and sculpture, March 5 through 27. The opening reception will be from 7 to 9 p.m. March 5.
Laska’s career spanned more than 70 years and exhibited a variety of stylistic influences. The exhibition covers a wide breadth of work, from his early years painting under the tutelage of Raphael Soyer in the Art Students League in New York, through his most recent work of 2007.
Laska was born in New York in 1918. He received his first training under the WPA Art Workshops, and studied drawing with the New York Art Students League and the New American Art School in the 1930s. Laska also worked with Raphael and Moses Soyer and James Leschay while studying in New York.
Laska served in World War II in the U.S. Army 104th Infantry Division, “The Timberwolves,” that liberated the Dora-Mittelbau Concentration Camp in Germany. He also fought on the front lines in France and Belgium. After the war, he moved to Chicago where he received a bachelor’s degree in art education and an MFA at the Chicago Art Institute. While in Chicago he was active with the art group Exhibition Momentum.
He also taught at the Chicago Art Institute, the Howell Neighborhood House, McCormick Theological Seminary and the YMCA until 1950. He then taught at the University High School of Illinois in Champaign.
He received a second master’s degree in education at the University of Illinois in 1953, and continued his studies at the University of Chicago, Roosevelt University, Indiana University and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He was also a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis in 1954. Laska began as an assistant professor of art at the Laboratory School at Indiana State University in 1954 and became a full professor of art at Indiana State University in 1967 and where he retired in 1981.
Laska exhibited his work nationally and his work is included in include numerous galleries in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. and New Haven, Conn. Regionally his work is included in collections at Indiana University, Evansville Museum, Franklin College, Tri Kappa Collection, Indiana State University and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. His extensive list of awards from the Paris Art League includes; Best of Exhibition in 1957, Second Prize in Portraiture in 1959, Painting of Exceptional Merit 1960-64, and Exceptional Merit in 1965. He received Honorable Mention awards at the Mid-States Art Exhibition in Evansville, Indiana in 1961, 1963, 1964 and 1967. He also received the Max De Jong Award in painting in 1965. Laska has also had several exhibitions at the Sheldon Swope Art Museum, including the Annual Wabash Valley Exhibition and a Solo Exhibition in 2002.
Laska died at his residence in 2009. As a high school teacher he had a long and lasting influence on many of his students who have gone on to become artists and art teachers. He received the art teacher of the year award from Indiana State Teachers Association and the John Herron School of Art.
He will also be long remembered not only by his students but for his murals depicting the life of Eugene V. Debs at the Debs Home and the murals at the Unitarian Universalist Church, both in Terre Haute.
The gallery is at 9 S. Seventh St.
