Giger's Alien Monster IV references also Gene Szafran's relief for Tomita's album cover for "Pictures at an Exhibtion"

leading from

  HR Giger: Alien Monster IV
and
Isao Tomita

a) Initial realisation
11th May 2016. Having discovered some signs of the cover for Tomita's album Tomita's Planets on May 9th 2016, shortly after Isao Tomita death had been announced,, I suddenly had the realisation coming from the inner Giger  that Giger had been inspired by the album cover for Tomita's "Pictures at an Exhibtion" as well, a relief by the illustrator Gene Szafran showing a human merged with technical machinery. If Giger had done a painting based on it, I realised that he would have turned the information inside out again with his surrealist methods. I wondered if there was a curled up creature with the back of the head representing the creature's head in an environment with vertical bars.

b) Finding the painting
Since he would have been introduced to Tomita's albums during the time of the Alien production in 1978, and showed some enthusiasm for the music and the album artwork. It would have been from that year onwards and so the inner Giger flying through Giger's work came to settle on Alien Monster IV which I had explored already by still hoped to find another element behind it. 

Alien (Winged) / Alien Monster IV by H.R.Giger
(Homage to Jean Delville?)

c) Looking for Alien Monster IV's head
Taking a good look, I came to realise that this piece of artwork inspired Giger with the idea of a roughly head shaped form in a technological environment and the curves in the upper background of the relief would suggest the curving walls of an alien building. Curved formations behind the head in the relief would become part of the the dome stretching across the creature's elongated head and indeed the curved indentation in the underside of the neck, and a diagonal line running across down to the left exposed area along the underside of the neck showing off the inner pipe work. 

d) Circle and Pipes
The lower part of the album cover shows a section filled with technical geometric features with a circle within it.  Giger's biomechanical environment shows part of a circular form running through the lower biomechanical surface and this area stops midway as a sort of a carved fissure. The pipes running down become organic living things with eyes and beaks.

e) Spine
the spine holding up the human's head becomes an indentation in the biomechanic surface with ribbed pipe work and a top feature upon that becomes a bottomless space within the flooring

f) Face
The jawline of the face inspires the egg tube or tail curling around sliding along the curved channel. The nose and the cheek become the arm, perhaps the ear becomes the hand that would transform into a daddy long leg like appendage. Remember that Alien Monster IV referenced the highlighted area of the face of the Golem in Steiner-Prag's illustration for Gustave Meyrink's novel, with the being's eyebrow and nose becoming the alien's head and his mouth and jaw becoming the creature's  body. The alien creature's tail would also have been inspired by the placement of the circle within the picture.

g) Ear
Perhaps the ear with it's fork at the fossa inspires pipe like parts of the side of the creature's head connecting with the back of its jaw and the area of the concha turned inside out inspires the eye like bulge on the head.