This article, written by the Venezuelan researcher and curator Josefina Núñez for the retrospective exhibition catalogue of the Venezuelan artist Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas, 2000, addresses specific aspects of Gego’s printmaking. The article explores areas of Gego’s work that have been seldom studied, particularly in terms of the connection between her printmaking and her other fields of expression (sculpture, drawing, weaving, and drawing without paper). Núñez refers to Gego’s masterful use of line in order to highlight the subtleties of her graphic work. It is not known whether she learned something about these techniques at school in Germany, or perhaps was introduced to them by her companion Gerd Leufert. Gego subsequently went on to experiment with printmaking in her visual art, and to study and work at such prestigious institutions as the Pratt Graphic Art Center (New York), the Tamarind Lithography Workshop (Reading, California), and the Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados [Associated Graphic Artists Workshop] (TAGA, Caracas). In her article, Núñez provides an articulate insight into Gego’s training, combined with a description of the artist’s graphic work. In this reviewer’s opinion, “Gego’s prints are a product of the workshop, of her hands-on approach in which the line is alive, it moves, it changes.”
This perspective is endorsed by the Venezuelan researcher Alejandro Salas (1960–2003) in his view of Gego as a printmaker: “Her lithographs and etchings are fields of graphic experimentation where the textures and graphic nuances of her techniques contribute to her exceptionally fine works” (Diccionario Biográfico de las Artes Visuales en Venezuela [Biographical Dictionary of the Visual Arts in Venezuela], Caracas, 2005).
