Gerard Malanga Biography

Gerard Joseph Malanga is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator and archivist.

Early Life

Born in the Bronx, New York, Malanga graduated from the School of Industrial Art in Manhattan and attended Wagner College on Staten Island. At Wagner, he befriended one of his English professors, Willard Maas and his wife, Marie Menken.

Andy Warhol and The Factory

Gerard Malanga was Warhol's assistant from 1963 to 1970 and as an actor, had lead parts in many of his early films. He danced with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Warhol's multimedia presentation of the Velvet Underground. Malanga claims to have created some of the works attributed to Warhol. In 1970, Malanga left Warhol's studio to work on his own.

Creative practice

Malanga is also known for his photography of 60's celebrities, including poets, rock stars, and actors.

His poetry has been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Unmuzzled OX.

Malanga created a series of deeply romantic films of his own, in which Malanga’s on-screen persona of "the young poet" is foregrounded in each frame.

Other early Malanga films also put the performer center stage within the filmmaker's lens. Mary for Mary (1966) is a portrait of the actor Mary Woronov. Donovan Meets Gerard (1966) documents a meeting between Malanga and the folk singer Donovan at Warhol’s studio. Pre-Raphaelite Dream (1968), documents the filmmaker’s friends and extended family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In The Recording Zone Operator (1968), shot on location in Rome in 35 mm Techniscope/Technicolor, Malanga worked with Tony Kinna, Anita Pallenberg and members of the Living Theatre.

In 1981, Malanga photographed the last farmer on Staten Island, Herbert Gericke.

Malanga maintains an archive of his still- and motion-picture records of life at Warhol's Factory, and continues his work as a poet. He is the author of some twenty volumes of poetry, including the collection This Will Kill That, and a collaboration with Andy Warhol, Screen Tests: A Diary.