Terminal 1, Departures Level, post-security

On view in its new location on the Concourse Level of Terminal 1 overlooking the airfield, Tony DeLap’s Floating Lady IV can be enjoyed by ticketed passengers departing from LAX. Gracing the large, airy bus portal, the sculpture is an abstract illusionary work that challenges the viewer’s perception of form. Composed of a Corten steel column bisected by a spine of clear acrylic, the 11-foot-tall artwork highlights DeLap’s facility with geometric shapes and life-long interest in magic as the upper portion of the column appears to mysteriously float atop the lower segment.

Originally unveiled in December of 1976, the sculpture was selected as the first-place winner in a state-wide sculpture competition sponsored by the Department of Airports, now known as Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that owns and operates Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). DeLap, a key figure of West Coast Minimalism, was commissioned by LAX to create an artwork celebrating our nation’s bicentennial. The sculpture was originally sited outdoors, then moved inside to the original portion of Terminal 1 in 1984, and now proudly welcomes passengers to Terminal 1’s extension, providing metaphorical and literal connectivity between the airport’s past and present.

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About the Artist

Tony DeLap was born in Oakland, CA in 1927, and died in Corona Del Mar, CA in 2019. He lived and worked in Orange County, CA.

DeLap and John Coplans were founding faculty members in the 1965 opening of the University of California at Irvine, where Tony taught in the Art Department until 1991. DeLap served as the project consultant for Best Kept Secret, UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971 as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980 held at the Laguna Art Museum in 2011-2012.

As a pioneer artist of Abstractionism, Minimalism and Op Art on the West Coast, DeLap has been included in such landmark exhibitions as The Responsive Eye (1965: Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY); Primary Structures (1966: Jewish Museum, New York, NY); and American Sculpture of the Sixties (1967: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA). In 2018, the Laguna Museum of Art mounted a major retrospective of DeLap’s work dating from 1961 to 2018, curated by Peter Frank and was accompanied by a fully illustrated publication. 

His work resides in the permanent collections of Tate Modern, London, UK; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC ;  Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, among many others.