This analysis by Catherine de Zegher focuses on Gego’s drawing in space. After an introduction in which she describes earlier works by important artists that engage the notion of drawing in space, as well as those by Gego’s contemporaries, de Zegher divides her study into five dialectical categories. In “abstract and real,” she discusses drawing that erases the borders between the real and the imaginary; in “two dimensional and three dimensional,” she discusses drawing that acts as a hinge between those two universes; in “dematerialization and materialization,” she discusses how thought and matter operate together to give shape to a single plane; in “matrix and matrixial,” she discusses the grid (matrix) as an instrument that makes way for a space of connection and other matrices. In closing, De Zegher affirms that the works entitled Reticulárea, with their rhizomatic growth, constitute a vindication of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things.

In 1996, Belgian curator and art critic Catherine de Zegher, who was director of The Drawing Center in New York from 1999 to 2006, came into contact with Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), specifically with her work in the drawing medium, when she selected one of her works for the show, Inside the Visible, an Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art: In, of, and from the Feminine (Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, January 30–May 12, 1996). From that time on, de Zegher has analyzed drawing in Gego’s work from a number of perspectives. Here, de Zegher provides an exhaustive critical study of Gego’s “drawing in space” by means of dialectical categories. First, de Zegher offers an extensive revision of earlier works and artists who employed the concept of drawing in space, and works and artists that she considers precursors to this sort of work. Thus, de Zegher assesses and defines by contrast what she deems are Gego’s major contributions to this field.Fragments of this essay were selected for publication in the bilingual book Desenredando la red. La Reticulárea de Gego. Una antología de respuestas críticas / Untangling the Web: Gego’s Reticulárea, An Anthology of Critical Response, organized by María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin, currently in the process of being published by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Fundación Gego, Caracas.