The Essential Paul Laffoley ─ Works from the Boston Visionary Cell

Paul Laffoley, a trained architect who once worked for Frederick Kiesler and Andy Warhol, has in recent years emerged as one of the leading visionary artists of our time. Lavishly illustrated,The Essential Paul Laffoley documents the evolution of his unique intellectual, spiritual, and artistic approaches.

Living and working in a tiny space in Boston he calls the “Boston Visionary Cell,” Laffoley is best known for his large mandala-like paintings filled with symbols and texts. Their titles range from the paranormal and arcane, such asThe Ectoplasmic Man and The Sexuality of Robots, to the organic, as withDas Urpflanze Haus, to the erudite, including De Rerum Natura, a reference to the Roman poet Lucretius. Whether focused on working with plants to create living architecture or centered on the process of alchemy, these detailed and brilliantly colored works reflect Laffoley’s utopian hopes and transdisciplinary interests: throughout, he aims to unite the boundless freedom of human imagination with the mathematical precision of the physical world.

Nearly one hundred of Laffoley’s works are showcased here along with his accompanying “thought-forms,” texts specific to each painting that comment on its particular content. Together with an introduction by editor and gallerist Douglas Walla, a biography by fellow artist Steven Moskowitz, and essays by scholars Linda Dalrymple Henderson and Arielle Saiber, this book is a long-awaited celebration of the theories, writings, and artworks of an extraordinary mind.

Paul Laffoley is an artist and architect based in Boston. Douglas Walla is the founder of Kent Fine Art in New York.