The first great retrospective of works by the German-born Venezuelan artist Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) was held in 1977 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [Contemporary Art Museum] in Caracas. Established as one of the great creators of Venezuelan art when she presented Reticulárea at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas in 1969, she now presented a collection of what she had been working on since then: a series of Reticuláreas, Chorros [Streams], and Esferas [Spheres] which deserved attention and an exhibition of this nature. These works place Gego’s language as among the most original and paradigmatic forms of expression to be found—not just in Venezuela, but throughout Latin America.
Beyond its relevance as a cultural and social commentary that documented a well-attended event, this article conveys the strong admiration and acknowledgment of Gego’s intellectual and artistic peers, in spite of favorable views held of kinetics in official circles and among certain critics who saw in these works another Venezuelan contribution to international art. The journalist starts by quoting Marta Traba, then goes on to present the opinions, albeit brief, of key people in the Venezuelan visual arts and literary community at the time, such as the painter and printmaker Luisa Palacios (La Nena), the Dutch-born Venezuelan sculptor Cornelis Zitman, the writer and poet Oswaldo Trejo, and the Brazilian critic (who was visiting Venezuela) Marc Berkowitz. The wish that Sonia Sanoja had expressed to the journalist came true and she presented Coreogegos on October 9 later that year.
It is true that Gego was practically ignored, as Traba so well describes, by another school of critical thought represented by Alfredo Boulton, an admirer and promoter of the work of Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Díez, and Alejandro Otero. In other words, the perspective that Traba had been criticizing for years, was mentioned by the journalist Luis Lozada Soucre at the beginning of his review.