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Gego

Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt (1 November 1912 – 17 September 1994), known as Gego, was a German-born Venezuelan sculptor and visual artist celebrated for her geometric wire constructions that transformed linear elements into spatial explorations of transparency and infinity.^[1]^[2] Born into a liberal Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany, she earned a degree in architecture and engineering from the Technical University of Stuttgart in 1938 before fleeing Nazi persecution in 1939, immigrating to Venezuela where she initially practiced architecture in Caracas.^[3]^[4] Gego transitioned to full-time artmaking in the mid-1950s, producing her first sculptures around 1957 and developing a distinctive abstract style influenced by her technical background, which emphasized open structures over solid forms.^[5] Her innovative works, such as the Reticuláreas series begun in 1969, consisted of interconnected wire meshes that defied traditional sculpture by creating dynamic, web-like volumes evoking organic growth and spatial ambiguity, often described by the artist as "drawings without paper."^[6] These pieces positioned her as a pivotal figure in mid-20th-century Venezuelan abstraction and kinetic art, alongside contemporaries exploring similar themes of movement and light.^[7] Throughout her career, Gego received recognition in Venezuela, including the National Prize for Drawing, and her installations, like the large-scale Tejeduras and environmental pieces, highlighted her experimental approach to materials such as stainless steel rods and aluminum wires.^[8] She maintained a reclusive studio practice in Caracas until her death, leaving a legacy of over 200 sculptures that continue to influence contemporary understandings of line and void in three-dimensional art.^[5]

Early Life and Education

Childhood and Family in Germany

Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt, known later as Gego, was born on August 1, 1912, in Hamburg, Germany, into a prosperous liberal Jewish banking family.^[9] ^[3] She was the sixth of seven children born to Eduard Martin Goldschmidt (1868–1956), a banker whose family's financial institution had been established by their great-grandfather J. Goldschmidt II in 1815, and Elizabeth Hanne Adeline Dehn (1875–1947).^[9] The Goldschmidt household provided an intellectually stimulating environment rooted in bourgeois Jewish traditions, emphasizing education and cultural engagement during the Weimar Republic era.^[9] As a child, Goldschmidt displayed early creative inclinations, often copying poems and short stories, though her formal pursuits remained practical rather than artistic.^[10] The family's assimilated Jewish identity fostered exposure to progressive ideas, including the modernist innovations of the Bauhaus movement, which operated as a hub for experimental design in pre-Nazi Germany and influenced her nascent interest in structure and form.^[9] Goldschmidt's youth unfolded amid Hamburg's vibrant urban and cultural scene, where the family's banking affluence supported a stable, intellectually oriented upbringing without direct involvement in artistic training.^[9] This period laid the groundwork for her later architectural studies, but her childhood focused on familial and environmental stimuli rather than specialized skills or vocational apprenticeships.^[3]

Architectural Training and Early Influences

Gertrud Goldschmidt, later known as Gego, enrolled at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart in 1932 to study architecture and engineering, completing her diploma in both disciplines in 1938.^[1] ^[11] This integrated program emphasized technical proficiency in structural analysis, material properties, and precise drafting techniques, providing a foundation in rational problem-solving for built forms.^[9] Her studies under architect Paul Bonatz exposed her to principles of durable construction and spatial organization, prioritizing functional stability over decorative excess.^[12] Following graduation, Goldschmidt briefly worked as a draftsman in Germany, applying her training to practical design tasks amid the escalating constraints of Nazi-era antisemitism, which curtailed opportunities for Jewish professionals.^[13] ^[14] This early experience honed her skills in line-based representation and load-bearing mechanics, concepts that echoed the era's shift toward efficient, modernist engineering paradigms rather than historical ornamentation.^[9] The emphasis on empirical testing of forms and materials in her education foreshadowed the structural experimentation in her subsequent artistic output, where abstract compositions derived from verifiable physical principles.^[15]

Emigration to Venezuela

Gertrud Goldschmidt left Germany in 1939 amid intensifying Nazi policies targeting Jews, including restrictions on professions and emigration barriers that her Jewish heritage triggered.^[3] Having completed her architecture and engineering degrees at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, she stayed in Hamburg longer than her family, who fled earlier, to finalize personal affairs before departing; unsuccessful visa applications to English-speaking nations left Venezuela as a viable option via an employment contract.^[9] ^[3] Upon arriving in Caracas, Goldschmidt adopted the pseudonym Gego—a phonetic contraction of "Gertrud Goldschmidt"—to mark her relocation and simplify her identity in the new context.^[1] With scant financial resources as a refugee, she faced immediate hurdles in leveraging her qualifications, as Venezuelan regulations invalidated foreign architectural credentials, limiting her to peripheral roles rather than full practice.^[16] ^[17] These barriers, compounded by gender biases in the profession and the immigrant status of many European exiles during Venezuela's oil-driven economic expansion, compelled Gego to accept sporadic freelance drafting and teaching assignments initially, deferring sustained creative endeavors.^[18] ^[19]

Artistic Career Beginnings

Initial Adaptation and Painting

Upon arriving in Venezuela in 1936, Gertrud Goldschmidt, known as Gego, initially adapted by working in architecture firms and contributing to city planning initiatives in Caracas, leveraging her engineering training from Germany.^[20] With limited professional opportunities in architecture due to her status as an immigrant, she pivoted toward fine arts by the late 1940s, establishing a studio practice amid the economic stability fueled by Venezuela's expanding oil industry.^[18] This period marked her practical integration into Venezuelan society, where she balanced artistic experimentation with educational roles, imparting technical drawing and design principles derived from her architectural background.^[9] Gego's earliest artistic outputs included paintings in gouache and watercolor on paper and cardboard, often capturing bright landscapes of Venezuela's coastal regions, reflecting her immersion in the new environment.^[21] These representational works quickly evolved toward abstraction, incorporating geometric forms influenced by modernist currents in Latin America, as she participated in group exhibitions at institutions like the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas Cristóbal Rojas.^[20] By the early 1950s, she had fully committed to art-making, abandoning architecture to focus on two-dimensional explorations that laid the groundwork for her later three-dimensional innovations.^[20] Concurrently, Gego took on teaching positions at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Cristóbal Rojas and the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo at Universidad Central de Venezuela, where she emphasized rigorous technical skills in drawing and spatial conceptualization.^[9] ^[22] These roles not only provided financial stability during Venezuela's post-World War II prosperity but also allowed her to synthesize her European training with local artistic dialogues, fostering a generation of students attuned to precise, structural approaches in visual arts.^[18]

Shift to Sculpture and Three-Dimensional Work

In the mid-1950s, following initial experiments in painting and engraving after her arrival in Venezuela, Gego abandoned two-dimensional media to pursue sculpture, producing her first three-dimensional works in 1957 using welded steel rods, wires, and sheets to investigate volume, transparency, and structural tension.^[23] ^[9] These constructs rejected traditional sculptural mass in favor of lightweight, linear frameworks that balanced precarious equilibrium, drawing on her engineering background to achieve precision in abstract spatial relations.^[24] Gego's early series, including pieces like 12 círculos concéntricos (1957), employed parallel lines and geometric planes to evoke depth and instability without reliance on mechanical motion, creating illusions of dynamism through viewer interaction and inherent form.^[25] While contemporaneous with Venezuela's kinetic art milieu—exemplified by Jesús Rafael Soto's vibrating grids and mobiles—Gego diverged by prioritizing static assemblies that simulated organic movement via tensile forces and optical shifts, eschewing motors or external activation for self-contained spatial ambiguity.^[25] ^[26] These inaugural sculptures appeared in group exhibitions such as Arte abstracto en Venezuela (1957) at Galería Don Hatch in Caracas, where their engineering rigor and abstract linearity drew notice amid the local geometric abstraction scene.^[5] By 1959, institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York had begun acquiring her work, signaling early international interest in her pivot toward experiential, non-figurative constructs.^[6]

Evolution of Style and Techniques

Drawings and Linear Explorations

Gego's linear explorations in drawings centered on the line as an autonomous entity, freed from its traditional role in defining form or representation to instead probe spatial perception and ambiguity within the two-dimensional plane. Drawing from her architectural education in Stuttgart during the 1930s, where parallel lines and crosshatching denoted solidity and depth in technical drafting, she repurposed these conventions into artistic marks that evoked volume without literal depiction.^[16]^[27]^[28] In the early 1960s, Gego executed ink and pen drawings on paper featuring layered, intersecting lines that suggested three-dimensional extension through optical tension and perceptual shifts, prefiguring her later spatial concerns. Techniques included dense overlays and gestural strokes, as in her 1963 Untitled works employing pen and black ink with brush-applied brown ink to create spidery webs and visual disruptions. These pieces, produced amid Venezuela's kinetic and abstract art milieu, emphasized line's tactile, organic vitality over rigid geometry, infusing abstraction with subjective expressiveness.^[29]^[30]^[31]^[32] Such drawings rejected decorative intent, treating line as a dynamic, self-sufficient element capable of generating ambiguity and illusory depth—effects achieved through accumulation and interruption rather than illusionistic precision. This focus on line's multivalent potential, evident in etchings and inks from 1959 onward, marked a pivotal shift from planar containment toward explorations of infinite relationality, though confined here to paper's surface.^[33]^[34]^[29]

Spatial Constructions and Organic Forms

During the 1960s and 1970s, Gego developed spatial constructions that employed modular elements to distort and inhabit space in non-Euclidean configurations, prioritizing empirical experimentation with balance and suspension over preconceived theoretical frameworks.^[25] These works, often site-specific and suspended from ceilings or walls, incorporated lightweight wood, metal rods, and mesh to form delicate lattices that responded dynamically to gravitational forces, with structural stability achieved through precise calibration of weight distribution and tensile forces.^[25] Viewer engagement was integral, as shifting positions altered the optical interplay of lines and voids, revealing layered transparencies and fragile equilibria that emphasized the viewer's corporeal presence within the installation.^[25] Gego's approach marked a shift from the precise, rigid geometries of her initial sculptural phase toward more irregular, organic morphologies, where deliberate asymmetries and manual interventions introduced variability and imperfection absent in machine-tooled forms.^[25] This evolution critiqued the deterministic mechanicism of contemporaneous Venezuelan Kinetic artists by favoring artisanal assembly—twisting and interlocking components by hand to evoke natural contingency rather than engineered uniformity—thus infusing her pieces with a tactile, provisional quality.^[35] Technical ingenuity lay in eschewing adhesives or welds for tension-based linkages, enabling modular units to interconnect via inherent elasticity and counterpoise, as evidenced in commissioned environmental pieces that demanded on-site adjustments for equilibrium under varying loads.^[25] Such methods underscored causal dependencies on material properties and physical laws, rendering each construction a provisional test of spatial causality.^[25]

Printmaking and Collaborative Projects

In the mid-1960s, Gego explored lithography as a means to translate her linear and spatial interests into reproducible formats, participating as a fellow at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles from November to December 1966.^[36] There, she produced a series of editioned lithographs, such as Untitled (Tamarind 1848B), which featured dynamic networks of lines and curves that echoed her three-dimensional constructs while adapting to the flat plane of paper through layered inking and subtle tonal variations.^[37] These works demonstrated her experimentation with the medium's potential for multiplicity, allowing broader dissemination of her abstract forms without compromising their intricate, web-like compositions derived from architectural precision.^[31] A notable collaborative endeavor was the 1964 portfolio Lo Nunca Proyectado (The Never Projected), co-created with Venezuelan poet Alfredo Silva Estrada, comprising seven inkless intaglio prints paired with poems.^[38] Executed in Caracas, these embossed sheets used drypoint techniques to create subtle relief impressions on paper, simulating the tactile depth and interwoven volumes of her sculptures through unpigmented textures rather than traditional ink application. This hybrid approach addressed the print medium's inherent limitations in conveying three-dimensionality, prioritizing the interplay of light, shadow, and negative space to evoke spatial ambiguity and organic meshes.^[39] Gego continued printmaking in Venezuela through local ateliers, such as the 1988 etching Untitled printed at Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados in Caracas, which maintained her focus on perforated-like incisions and linear intersections for editioned accessibility.^[40] These projects extended her obsessions with line as a structural element into collaborative and reproducible realms, fostering experimental hybrids that bridged drawing, relief, and intaglio while emphasizing material transparency over illusionistic depth.^[5]

Development of Reticulárea

In 1969, Gego developed the Reticulárea series, beginning with small-scale prototypes known as "reticules" constructed from wire mesh that translated her prior linear drawings into three-dimensional, suspended forms.^[41] These initial units featured modular triangular bases, assembled to create expansive, net-like structures emphasizing spatial continuity over mass.^[42] The first full installation occurred in June 1969 at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, occupying an entire gallery with suspended elements that rejected traditional sculptural volume in favor of permeable, interconnected voids.^[43] Gego employed stainless steel and aluminum wires for their durability and resistance to corrosion in Venezuela's humid climate, supplemented occasionally by copper, lead, or nylon for varied tensile properties.^[41] To achieve infinite interconnection without imposed hierarchy, she fabricated thousands of individual modules—often by knotting or twisting wires—and linked them using metal ties or clips, deliberately avoiding welding to maintain flexibility and adaptability during assembly.^[44] This technique enabled the structures to defy conventional solidity, forming lightweight lattices where individual elements interlocked democratically, producing empirical effects like light refraction through the mesh and dynamic shadow patterns on surrounding surfaces.^[45] By the 1970s, Reticulárea evolved from prototypes to immersive, room-sized grids, with installations scaling to encompass viewer movement within the work, as seen in variants like Reticulárea cuadrada 71/11, which measured approximately 205 x 140 x 55 cm using multi-material suspensions.^[41] This progression culminated her inquiries into space, prioritizing modular repetition and tensile equilibrium over fixed form, with later iterations up to 1982 refining density and extension for heightened perceptual interplay of transparency and opacity.^[42]

Major Works and Innovations

Key Sculptural Series

Gego's Chorro (Stream) series, initiated around 1970, features elongated vertical forms assembled from bundled and linked stainless steel wires, mimicking the cascading flow of water jets or fountains. These freestanding or hanging sculptures, often reaching heights of up to 2 meters, employ tension and asymmetry to convey dynamic verticality, with materials like bronze and wire painted or left raw to enhance textural contrasts. Produced primarily between 1970 and 1974, the series marked an early exploration of modular assembly outside planar drawing, with Gego gifting most examples to Venezuelan institutions in the 1980s.^[46]^[7] The Esferas (Spheres) followed in the mid-1970s, comprising hollow, geometric orbs formed from interconnected wire frames and chains, typically in stainless steel, that interrogate the boundaries between solid form and empty space. Works such as Esfera No. 3 (1976) and Esfera N° 8 (1977), measuring around 74 cm in diameter, utilize triangular modules to create translucent enclosures that shift with viewer perspective, emphasizing light penetration and structural fragility over opaque mass. These pieces, suspended or freestanding, expanded Gego's scalar innovations by hollowing out volume, with international exhibitions beginning by the late 1970s.^[47]^[48]^[49] In her later career, Gego produced the diminutive Bichitos (Little Bugs) table-top sculptures from 1987 to 1989, hand-assembling irregular clusters from repurposed industrial wires, rods, and remnants of prior works to prioritize organic asymmetry and tactile improvisation. Ranging from 20 to 50 cm in scale, these free-form pieces eschew geometric regularity for twisted, insect-like contortions that invite manual interaction, serving as intimate counterparts to larger constructs and highlighting resourcefulness in material use.^[50]^[51]^[25]

Installations and Environmental Pieces

Gego executed large-scale, site-specific installations in public and private buildings across Caracas from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, adapting her linear wire constructions to architectural contexts for immersive environmental engagement.^[52] These works suspended expansive meshes and nets to modulate light, acoustics, and spatial perception, often commissioned for emblematic structures where the art extended beyond isolated objects into interactive fields that enveloped viewers and altered room dynamics.^[25] Logistically, installations demanded meticulous engineering—anchoring delicate stainless steel and aluminum elements under tension without compromising host buildings—leveraging her pre-art career training in architecture to navigate site constraints like ceiling heights and load-bearing capacities.^[16] Conceptually, these environmental pieces prioritized causal interplay between material properties, gravity, and environment, fostering transparency and fluidity that dissolved boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and observer movement; for instance, suspended panels diffused natural light while permitting visual permeability, underscoring empirical observations of how thin wires (typically 1-2 mm diameter) could define volume without solidity.^[25] Such integrations posed challenges in material durability against humidity and vibration in Venezuelan climates, prompting use of galvanized coatings, yet prioritized experiential immediacy over longevity.^[53] The fragility of joints and filaments rendered permanent fixtures rare; most were temporary, methodically dismantled post-exhibition to avert corrosion or collapse—evidenced by conservation records showing iterative reassembly rather than fixed placement—which intentionally amplified ephemerality as a feature, mirroring life's impermanent structures and critiquing monumental permanence in public art.^[25] ^[54] Surviving examples, documented via sketches and photographs, highlight how these vanished works influenced subsequent spatial practices by demonstrating scalable, responsive abstraction unbound by site.^[52]

Reception, Criticism, and Legacy

Recognition During Lifetime

Gego garnered notable acclaim within Venezuela, where she was elected to the Academia de Bellas Artes in 1966 and received the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1979 for her innovative sculptural contributions.^[10]^[55] Earlier, she secured the National Prize in Drawing at the 19th Official Annual Exhibition of Drawing and Engraving in 1968, affirming her technical prowess in linear abstraction.^[56] These honors reflected her status among local peers, yet her output emphasized experimental forms over marketable narratives, aligning with a deliberate detachment from promotional circuits. International visibility emerged modestly through institutional acquisitions, beginning with the Museum of Modern Art's purchase of her 1959 sculpture Sphere under director Alfred H. Barr Jr., who praised its volumetric transparency.^[57]^[58] Further MoMA holdings from the 1970s, such as Untitled (1970), underscored growing curatorial interest in her spatial constructs amid op art and kinetic movements.^[59] Nonetheless, Gego's reluctance to engage commercial dealers—prioritizing studio autonomy and direct experimentation over sales—curtailed broader market penetration, yielding sparse transaction records relative to politically attuned contemporaries in Latin America during eras of regional upheaval.^[5] Exhibitions in Venezuela, including solos at the Museo de Bellas Artes (e.g., 1961 drawings show), highlighted her mastery of line and volume, often lauded for precision without overt ideological content.^[60] Participation in U.S. venues like the 1965 The Responsive Eye at MoMA introduced her tensile works to global abstraction discourse, though sustained international circuits remained peripheral until later decades.^[9] This pattern of selective, institution-driven exposure, eschewing gallery commodification, sustained her relative obscurity abroad despite domestic esteem.

Posthumous Reappraisal and Exhibitions

The Fundación Gego was established in Caracas shortly after the artist's death on September 17, 1994, to safeguard her archive, promote scholarly research, and organize exhibitions of her oeuvre.^[61] This institution has facilitated the documentation and public access to her wire-based sculptures and drawings, enabling a structured posthumous evaluation of her contributions to spatial abstraction. A significant surge in institutional attention occurred with the 2002 traveling retrospective "Gego: Origin and Encounter," organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which toured internationally and emphasized her evolution from organic forms to the Reticulárea series, drawing scholarly focus to her technical innovations in tensile structures.^[27] Further momentum built through exhibitions like the 2000 survey at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, underscoring her integration of line and volume independent of monumental sculpture traditions.^[4] The exhibition "Gego: Measuring Infinity," held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from March 31 to September 10, 2023—the first major U.S. retrospective since 2005—presented over 140 works, including large-scale Reticulárea installations, and subsequently traveled to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from November 7, 2023, to February 4, 2024.^[25] ^[62] This show highlighted her defiance of planar geometry through dynamic, site-responsive wire networks, attracting curatorial interest in her influence on kinetic and environmental art precedents. Auction records reflect this reappraisal, with Reticulárea pieces fetching up to $774,700 in sales during the 2020s, indicating market validation tied to her material-specific experiments rather than broader exclusionary narratives.^[63] Such metrics suggest rediscovery driven by the inherent challenges of exhibiting fragile, non-replicable media, which limited earlier circulation compared to more portable abstractions.

Critical Evaluations and Influences

Gego's innovations in "drawing without paper" earned acclaim for transforming linear elements into spatial syntax that delineated volume through tension and transparency, leveraging her architectural engineering background to engineer tensile wire constructs predating minimalist reductions of form to essentials. Works like her Reticulárea series (1969–1982) demonstrated this by creating immaterial architectures where lines generated optical illusions of infinity and shadow equated solid presence, as noted in formal analyses emphasizing her defiance of traditional sculpture's mass. This precision distinguished her from looser kinetic precedents like Alexander Calder's mobiles, which she encountered through Venezuelan abstraction circles but critiqued implicitly via her static, engineered rigor over whimsical motion.^[25]^[18]^[7]^[12] Critics have balanced this praise by observing that Gego's steadfast avoidance of color, narrative, or figurative reference—prioritizing monochromatic wire grids—yielded a limited thematic range, fostering visual repetition in later organic forms that risked perceptual monotony despite variational complexity. In Venezuela's politicized milieu of the 1960s–1970s, where abstraction often engaged national identity or social upheaval, her nonobjective focus evaded such dialogues, prioritizing causal mechanics of space over cultural specificity, as evaluators like Marta Traba situated her kinetic originality within but apart from broader geometric trends she deemed overly detached. This formal insularity, while enabling unparalleled spatial autonomy, constrained engagement with contemporaneous Latin American constructivism's occasional socio-political inflections.^[7]^[64]^[54] Gego exerted influence on Latin American constructivists by exemplifying line's capacity for organic, non-Euclidean space, inspiring peers like Jesús Rafael Soto in kinetic explorations while her reticular meshes informed subsequent environmental abstractions unbound by plinth or pedestal. Received influences included European Bauhaus-derived precision from her Stuttgart training and Venezuelan abstractionists Alejandro Otero and Soto, who encouraged her shift to three-dimensionality, yet she synthesized these into a sui generis syntax causal to her tensile innovations rather than derivative emulation. Artist correspondences and pedagogical roles at Caracas institutions further propagated her emphasis on intuitive logic over rigid geometry.^[25]^[7]^[65]

Personal Life and Final Years

Relationships and Domestic Life

Gego married the German immigrant Ernst Gunz in 1940 shortly after arriving in Venezuela, and the couple collaborated on establishing a lamp and furniture manufacturing business.^[9] They had two children, a son named Thomas and a daughter named Barbara.^[66] ^[27] The marriage ended in separation in 1951.^[67] Following the separation, Gego entered a long-term partnership with the German-Venezuelan artist and graphic designer Gerd Leufert in 1952, a relationship marked by mutual artistic support that endured until Leufert's death in 1992.^[3] ^[68] This companionship coincided with her deepening commitment to sculpture and drawing, sustained by a combined residence and studio in Caracas that allowed for consistent creative output amid the country's oil-driven economic stability from the 1950s through the 1970s.^[69] Gego's social interactions remained selective, emphasizing intellectual exchanges with kinetic artists such as Jesús Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero within Venezuela's abstract art community, rather than pursuing connections with affluent patrons or broader societal elites. Her family, including children and later grandchildren, played a role in preserving her archive through the establishment of the Fundación Gego after her death.^[70]

Health Decline and Death

In the late 1980s, Gego's physical strength waned, preventing her from executing large-scale three-dimensional sculptures such as her Reticuláreas and Chorros, prompting a shift to smaller, flat compositions known as Dibujos sin papel (Drawings Without Paper). These works, produced on layered paper and acetate, emphasized linear explorations in two dimensions while incorporating elements like folded grids and translucent materials.^[71]^[72] She continued producing drawings, prints, and woven textiles into her final years, alongside efforts to catalog and organize her studio archive in Caracas.^[73] Gego died on September 17, 1994, in Caracas at the age of 82.^[70] Her estate, including artworks, documents, and tools, was bequeathed to her family, who promptly established the Fundación Gego that same year to conserve, inventory, and facilitate public access to her oeuvre through loans to museums and exhibitions.^[70]^[73]

References

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Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) - MoMA
A leading figure of Venezuelan abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1912, and graduated with a degree ...
[2]
Biography - I GegoArtista.com
Gego was born in the German city of Hamburg in August 1912. She graduated as an engineer with a specialty in architecture from the University of Stuttgart, ...<|separator|>
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Gego's Biography | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Gertrud Goldschmidt (Gego) is born in Hamburg on August 1, in a liberal, Jewish family. 1932 Receives her degree in architecture and engineering.
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20th century avant-garde artist Gego, who was trained as an architect in Germany before moving to Venezuela, is known for her exploration of line and space, ...
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"Gego" Gertrude Louise Goldschmidt Biography - The Annex Galleries
Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt also known as “Gego” from childhood, was born on August 1, 1912 in Hamburg, Germany. She was educated at the University of ...
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Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) - The Women's Studio
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At The Guggenheim, Gego Shines As One Of The Greatest ... - Forbes
Apr 20, 2023 · ... Gertrud Goldschmidt found scant opportunity for a female immigrant to design buildings in her adopted Venezuela. She became an artist. An ...<|separator|>
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'She should be up there with the greatest': celebrating the art of Gego
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Apr 27, 2007 · Gego started slowly. After arriving in Venezuela and finding few architectural gigs, she focused on painting and drawing and did some studio ...
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Jan 24, 2023 · Gertrude Goldschmidt, also known by the moniker Gego, was a German-Venezuelan architect, artist, and educator who was born in Hamburg in 1912.Missing: emigration | Show results with:emigration
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It was in this context that Gego began her new life in her adopted home of Venezuela. She began doing freelance work at architecture firms and city planning ...Missing: career painting
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Empieza a impartir cursos de arte en la Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, en Caracas, y en la Escuela de Artes ...Missing: teaching | Show results with:teaching
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Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Eight Squares. 1961 - MoMA
She and her family left after the Nazis took power, and she ended up in Venezuela. There, she adopted the name Gego, a contraction of her birth name. Curator, ...Missing: origin shortening
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Gego (born Gertrud Goldschmidt) studied engineering and architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany. She arrived in Venezuela in 1939.
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Dec 4, 2022 · The artist known as Gego fled Nazi Germany for Venezuela, where she lived largely without notice. Now, her work is hotly in demand.
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Gego | Hamburger Kunsthalle
Nov 29, 2013 · ... autonomy of line. Born in Hamburg in 1912, Gego studied architecture under Paul Bonatz at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart in the 1930s.
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Untitled | The Art Institute of Chicago
A work made of pen and black ink, with brush and brown ink, over Untitled, 1963. Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) · A work made of pen and black ...
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Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Untitled. 1966 - MoMA
A unique figure among Venezuelan abstractionists of the 1960s and 1970s, Gego inflected geometric abstraction with expressive subjectivity.Missing: Op | Show results with:Op
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“Gego: Measuring Infinity” at the Guggenheim - Aeqai
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It was the artist's sustained exploration of line, not as the boundary of form but as mark, that led her to probe its multivalent identity: its ...Missing: linear 1960s
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Gego: Lines in Space - The Brooklyn Rail
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[35]
Gego - Artforum
After a relatively conventional practice of geometrical sculpture, Gego trumped modernism in the late '60s by formulating new artistic systems that set her free ...
[36]
Tamarind Fellowship, November - December 1966 : artist Gego
This text describes the most outstanding characteristics of the works created by Gego during her involvement with the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, ...Missing: 1975 | Show results with:1975
[37]
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) - Untitled (Tamarind 1848B)
Printer: Tamarind Lithography Workshop. Publisher: Tamarind Lithography Workshop. Date: 1966. Medium: Lithograph. Dimensions: Sheet: 31 3/4 × 22 3/4 in. (80.6 ...
[38]
Plate seven, from The Never Projected (Lo Nunca Proyectado) | The ...
These inkless intaglio prints, sheets of paper embossed without pigment to produce barely discernible impressions, resulted from a brief collaboration between ...
[39]
Conversación con Gego · ICAA Documents Project - ICAA/MFAH
Regarding the former, Gego engaged in interesting cross-disciplinary collaborative projects throughout her career, especially involving literature, and ...
[40]
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) - Untitled - The Metropolitan Museum of ...
Printer: Taller de Artistas Graficos Asociados, Caracas (Venezuelan). Date: 1988. Medium: Etching. Dimensions: 13 5/8 × 11 3/4 in. (34.6 × 29.8 cm).Missing: lithography editions
[41]
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Square Reticularea 71/11. 1971 - MoMA
Medium: Stainless steel, copper, lead, and plastic ; Dimensions: 80 11/16 x 55 1/8 x 21 5/8" (205 x 140 x 55 cm) ; Credit: Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
[42]
Reticularea - I GegoArtista.com
1969-1982. Reticulárea is an installation created from the assembly of modular pieces, most of them of triangular base, made out of stainless steel and ...Missing: inception materials techniques evolution<|separator|>
[43]
Gego - ArtNexus
Therefore, it was her job to liquidate the family's last belongings and to throw the key to their home into the river before emigrating, at twenty-seven years ...
[44]
Reticulárea, 1969 | Gego | MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of ...
In order to avoid welding, Gego devised a system of assembling with metal ties, which she refined with the use of industrial materials. A system of wires ...Missing: inception techniques installations
[45]
Description of Reticulárea installation photographs (1969–82)
Mar 31, 2023 · The images show Gego's large-scale environmental installation titled Reticulárea, loosely translating to “area of nets” in Spanish.Missing: inception materials techniques evolution
[46]
Gego's Stream No. 7 - post
Gego (1912–1994, Gertrud Goldschmidt), arguably the most influential Venezuelan artist of the twentieth century, was the critical counter-figure of ...
[47]
Gego's Abstract Sculptures Make São Paulo Debut - Newcity Brazil
Feb 18, 2020 · While she developed her career in the context of Venezuelan modernity, her work has a different sensibility to it.
[48]
Gego. Elusive Transparency - Casa Daros Latinamerica Collection
In 1974, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) initiated a series of works entitled Troncos (Trunks), followed, in 1976, by another grouping known as Esferas ( ...
[49]
Esfera N° 8 | All Works - The MFAH Collections
Esfera N° 8 ; Artist Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt)(Venezuelan, born Germany, 1912–1994)Venezuelan, born Germany, 1912–1994 ; CultureVenezuelan ; Date1977 ; MediumSteel ...
[50]
Last Works: Tejeduras, Bichos and Bichitos (1987–91)
In the late 1980s Gego developed three final series: Tejeduras (Weavings, 1988-91), Bichos (Bugs, ca. 1987–91), and Bichitos (Small Bugs, 1987–89).Missing: date | Show results with:date
[51]
Bichito 88/42, 1988 | Gego - Macba
... Gego produced a series of small sculptures that she called Bichitos. Years earlier, the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark had produced her famous Bichos, small ...
[52]
Works in Public Spaces - I GegoArtista.com
As of the sixties, Gego is invited to display her works for emblematic public as well as private buildings in Caracas. Some of these materialized in important ...Missing: installations | Show results with:installations
[53]
Gego: Measuring Infinity - Studio International
Dec 11, 2023 · By this time, she had been in Venezuela for more than a decade, but it was in the 50s when her transition to artist was completed. Gego ( ...
[54]
On Gego, Miguel Braceli, and the Reticuláreas - e-flux
Oct 3, 2024 · Since 2002, it has rarely been available for viewing, a limitation, attributed to conservation issues, which seems to have become permanent ...
[55]
[PDF] GEGO (Gertrud Goldschmidt)
During her lifetime she was a prominent artist, creator of emblematic works of art in. Venezuela, such as Reticulárea (1969) or Cuerdas de Parque Central (1969) ...<|separator|>
[56]
[PDF] GEGO (Gertrude Luise Goldschmidt) b. 1912, Hamburg, Germany d ...
1961 Recent Drawings by Gego, Museo de Bellas Artes ... 1968 National Prize in Drawing, 19th Annual Official Exhibition of Drawing and Engraving, Museo.<|separator|>
[57]
[Letter] 1969 December 23, New York [to] Rachel Conkright
Long before the 1969 version of Reticulárea was created, MoMA had acquired the sculpture Sphere (1959), by Gego, which Alfred H. Barr Jr. thought possessed ...
[58]
[PDF] ARTISTDOSSIER - Lévy Gorvy
May 24, 2015 · Pérez-Oramas notes that Alfred Barr presciently acquired Gego's. 1959 tabletop sculpture Sphere for moma after it was shown in New. York in a ...<|separator|>
[59]
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Untitled. 1970 - MoMA
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Untitled. 1970. Colored ... - 2001, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and Caracas, acquired from Fundación Gego.
[60]
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Eight Squares. 1961 - MoMA
Dissolving planes into lines and treating lines as shapes in space, this sculpture explores, in the artist's words, "the transparency of volume.Missing: Bichos | Show results with:Bichos<|separator|>
[61]
Gego - Announcements - e-flux
Dec 11, 2013 · Gego's revolutionary and experimental approach to line, sculpture and 'drawing in space' had a significant influence on countless Latin American ...
[62]
The Guggenheim Museum Presents “Gego: Measuring Infinity”
Mar 31, 2023 · This major retrospective offers a fully integrated view of the influential German-Venezuelan artist and her distinctive approach to the language of abstraction.Missing: recognition awards
[63]
Gego | 111 Artworks at Auction - MutualArt
Gego's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from 275 USD to 774,700 USD, depending on the size and medium of the ...Missing: Reticulárea 2020s
[64]
Gego · ICAA Documents Project
Marta Traba analyzes the special characteristics of Gego's visual language by studying the public works rendered by the artist in Caracas.Missing: evaluation | Show results with:evaluation
[65]
A Solid Core of Reasoning: Ruth Auerbach on GEGO - LA ESCUELA
Oct 14, 2022 · Gego (1912–1994) was a German-Venezuelan artist, architect, and designer who gained international recognition with her large-format spatial installations.Missing: early | Show results with:early
[66]
https://www.nmwa.org/blog/nmwa-exhibitions/pressing-ideas-fifty-years-of-womens-lithographs-from-tamarind-artist-spotlight-gego/
[67]
Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue - Studio International
Dec 3, 2014 · The vibrant sculptural works in wire and metal for which Gertrud Goldschmidt is known are complemented in this major retrospective by ...
[68]
Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue - Announcements - e-flux
Sep 25, 2014 · The partnership between Gego and Leufert resulted in lifelong mutual support that concurrently nurtured their personal relationship and their ...
[69]
ACTIVITIES - Fundacion Gego
Museo Jumex presents the acclaimed exhibition,. Gego: Measuring Infinity ...
[70]
FUNDACIÓN GEGO - Fundacion Gego
Under the auspices of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Fundación Gego, the Fondo para el Arte del Caribe is created in 2010.Missing: date | Show results with:date
[71]
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Drawing without Paper 85/19. 1985
Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) Drawing without Paper 85/19 1985 ; Medium: Iron wire, copper, and paint ; Dimensions: 9 13/16 x 9 13/16 x 7 7/8" (25 x 25 x 20 cm).
[72]
Gego: Drawing in Space at the Guggenheim - The New York Times
Mar 30, 2023 · Gego was born in 1912 to a secular Jewish banking family in Hamburg, Germany. She started making art when young but studied architecture and ...
[73]
Gego's Artistic Legacy | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation
Mar 31, 2023 · This exhibition showcases four decades of her artistic production, from the 1950s to the 1990s, and it occupies almost our entire museum.Missing: recognition awards