Ever since he first began to write about Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), on the occasion of the inaugural of Reticulárea (1969), the Venezuelan critic and curator Roberto Guevara (1932–1998) was one of the first to point out the difference in the constructive essence of her work, particularly as compared to other artists working in abstract-geometrical or specifically kinetic languages. In this 1980 essay, Guevara returns to that idea by suggesting that the Constructivist essence of Gego’s work relies more heavily on its particular way of relating to the world than on its formal qualities. In other words, Gego relied on her genius in working with the possibilities of her adoptive country; on her works’ affinity with the natural world, and her silent passion for weaving. This reached its zenith with her production of Reticulárea (1969), and in the 1980s, it gave rise to the new works that Guevara defines as taking possession of “total, infinite, invisible space (…) as though it were possible to draw in the air with ropes, rods, and highly ingenious ligatures.” Guevara’s article “Para estar con Gego” [To Be with Gego] is of great interest because it identifies important moments in Gego’s artistic career, which in his opinion, entitled her to the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas [National Prize for the Visual Arts] (1979). This article also mentions Gego’s involvement in urban architectural projects that as Guevara points out, are featured in a number of buildings in the city of Caracas, and are the result of her creative dialogue with architects, designers, builders, and urbanists.
Translated into English by Paulette Pagani in 2010, this article is among the documents chosen for 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, María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin (organizers)—to be published by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Fundación Gego, Caracas.
