The Colombian critic and art historian F. Gil Tovar wrote this article about the German-born Venezuelan artist Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) on the occasion of her exhibition Gego: Esculturas, 1957–1967 [Gego: Sculpture, 1957–1967] at the Luis Ángel Arango Library in Bogotá in 1967. As the name implies, the exhibition consisted of three-dimensional works (made with rigid materials) from Gego’s earliest period, which revealed her extensive experimentation with geometry and her use of parallel lines. The exhibition was shown at the Galería Conkright earlier that year.
Notwithstanding Gil Tovar’s classification of Gego’s work within one of two German art movements, the search for signs of German culture and visual art in her work has prompted a great deal of speculation among critics, particularly in recent critical appraisals of her work that could quite legitimately identify this article as a harbinger of things to come. One example of this can be seen in the essay by Hannah Feldman, “On Not Being Venezuelan” in the catalogue for the exhibition: Gego 1957–1988: Thinking the Line. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006). This is the basis of an ongoing argument between those who see Gego’s work as an undeniable product of her life in Venezuela, and those who believe that her work is fundamentally influenced by the German and European avant-garde.
On the other hand, Gil Tovar’s article refers to certain aspects of Gego’s work—such as the virtual volume of her works and the relationships that they suggest, among others—which would be fertile ground for future critical reviews.