Search

German-born Venezuelan artist Gego produced a wide range of line based abstract work. This text traces her exploration of line and space and her attempts to make visible the invisible. By manipulating the density of lines or by interrupting them, she brought light, shadow and feeling into her linear works.

From the late 1950s until the 1980s, the German-born Venezuelan artist Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) made drawings, prints, three-dimensional works, hanging-net pieces (reticulareas), and wire constructions (drawings without paper) of extraordinary quality. Taken as a whole, these works illustrate the issue at the core of her production: the liberation of line from volume and form into space. Though little known outside of Latin America, Gego's work enjoyed a dialogue with twentieth-century artists and movements active not only in Venezuela, but also worldwide. In a series of essays examining her art in relation to Modernism, Informalism, kinetic art, and other tendencies, this volume--the second in the MFAH International Center for the Arts of the Americas series--situates Gego in her international context.

Rare exhibition catalogue of iconic work of Gego. "There are a few exceptional site-specific installations that paradoxically transcend site specificity and become meaningful and even transformative for audiences who may never actually experience them, at least in a direct, physical way. Instead, aided in part by documentary photos, sketches, reviews, scholarship, fragments, and/or related artworks, these expressions begin to occupy alternate, virtual spaces perpetually defined and redefined by viewers separated from the initial installations by both space and time. In June 1969, the German-born Venezuelan artist Gertrud Goldschmidt (19121994), better known as Gego, presented what would become such an installation when she astonished, even enchanted visitors to Sala 8 at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, with Reticulárea. Using primarily stainless-steel wire, Gego, who was described by one contemporary reviewer as a web-fairy,ʺ wove an intricate, net-like environment which both obscured and revealed the museum space while demanding the fundamental, active participation of the viewerœs eyes, mind, and body. However, over the years, the central role of the viewer as an activating, engaging presence in Reticulárea has been undermined by the fact that the work has often been out of public view (for numerous institutional, financial, political, and conservation-related reasons), making it relatively difficult to access or experience in person. Nevertheless, Gegoœs most celebrated creation has overcome such mere physical obstacles to establish itself as a watershed achievement in twentieth-century art, managing to cast its web well beyond an isolated museum space." (Ref: Melina Kervandjian, Untangling The Web Gego's "Reticulárea," An Anthology Of Critical Response ).

The work of Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912-1994) relatively unknown outside of Latin America is an extraordinary example of the decisive changes that influenced modern culture after WWII. Born in Hamburg, she studied Architecture and engineering and then emigrated to Venezuela in 1939 where she began her artistic career. Her work, however, has only begun to be noticed recently by critics.Gego: Defying structures deals with a mistrust of architecture, starting with her first pieces, which were heavily influenced by constructivism, until those showing her decisive break with predominating paradigms (Reticulareas), and her adoption of a new sculptural language that materializes in metallic wefts that evolve towards ambiguous forms somewhere between organic and geometric (Chorros, Troncos y Esferas).

"Magna exhibition dedicated to the architectural graphic art of Gego (b. Germany1932, immigrated to Venezuela, in 1939, d. 1994) featuring 96 works that include plans, drawings, watercolors, sketches, notes and photographs elaborated between 1937 and 1989. The pieces exhibited reflect her academic formation as an architect, a formation that later allowed her the domain of her 3D works and the understanding of space. Exhibition curated by Hannia Gómez and the museography was by John Lange"--Provided by vendor.