Under the subtitle “Gego,” José María Parreño devotes this section of his essay “De una diversa fragilidad” [From a Diverse Fragility] to Gego, which he wrote for the exhibition Frágil [Fragile] (Segovia, Spain: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [Contemporary Art Museum] Esteban Vicente, 2008). He says that her position is at odds with other current art perspectives; as though the Haese reticule were to expand, minimalist lines were to become irregular, or Kinetic art was to exhibit signs of fracture. Parreño mentions Gego’s arrival in Venezuela from Germany, and her earliest sculptures, which in his view are reminiscent of the work of Alejandro Otero, Jesús Soto, and Carlos Cruz-Díez. But Gego then moved away from the prevailing abstract trend in 1950s Venezuela to reinvent, in the late 1960s, a Constructivist language based on Reticuláreas that blended the logical space of geometry into the organic nature of life. Based on this thesis, Parreño analyzes the work Gego produced after the Reticuláreas, such as her Chorros [Streams], Dibujos sin papel [Drawings without Paper], and Tejeduras [Weavings]. He compares them to, and distinguishes them from, the work of artists such as Alexander Calder and Ferran. He sees Gego’s work as a reaction to the Venezuelan Kinetic art that was associated with the developmental interests of the economic and governmental elite (which had become the target of universal criticism). He ends his essay by defining Gego’s work as “possibly a post-Auschwitz form of sculpture: an unstable, anti-sculptural effort,” paraphrasing the well-known quote by Theodor W. Adorno.

The exhibition Frágil [Fragile] curated by José María Parreño, assistant director of the Esteban Vicente Contemporary Art Museum in Segovia, Spain (October 15, 2008 to January 11, 2009), featured works by the German–born Venezuelan artist, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), as well as works by Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, Spain, b. 1958); Roger Ackling (Isleworth, United Kingdom, b. 1947);  Andy Goldsworthy (Cheshire, United Kingdom, b. 1956); Günter Haese (Kiel, Germany, b. 1924); Antoni Llena (Barcelona, Spain, b. 1942); Mark Lombardi (New York, United States, 1951–2000); the Canadian-born artist living in Taos, New Mexico, Agnes Martin (1912–2004); Helen Maurer (Portsmouth, United Kingdom, b. 1967); Rei Naito (Hiroshima, Japan, b. 1961); Fred Sandback (New York, United States, 1943–2003); and the Swiss-born artist living in Brazil, Mira Schendel (1919–1988). 

Out of Parreño’s extensive essay, the section subtitled “Gego” is the only one that has been analyzed. This section is interesting because Parreño considers Gego within both an international and a Venezuelan context, highlighting her works as counterpoints to the trend for Kinetic [art] that dominated Venezuelan art in the 1950s. From another perspective, Parreño is a shrewd and innovative interpreter of Gego’s work, detecting qualities that he uses to suggest poetic yet precise definitions of her Reticuláreas and the other works she created after “reinventing a constructivist language in the late 1960s.”