This document is an unsigned review announcing the opening of Gego’s environmental work, Reticulárea on Sunday, June 8, 1969, at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas. The journalist points out two contradictory perspectives that converge in this work. On the one hand, it is composed of fragile lines that are subtle and almost lyrical, but on the other, it calls up the image of a hallucinatory spider’s web that seems to emerge from an appalling nightmare. The article describes the work as isolated pieces and modulated columns. It calls attention to the participation of the museum’s director, Miguel Arroyo, in the very idea of environmental artwork. Along with a description of some of the work’s characteristics, it offers both biographical information and an overview of Gego’s work. Apparently, the artist herself classified this work as “meditative.” The review concludes with short excerpts from the catalog.

There were a number of press reviews, some like this short article unsigned, that announced the opening of the exhibition of Reticulárea, by the Venezuelan artist originally from Germany, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 1969. There is no question that the work took the Venezuelan viewing public by surprise and came to be regarded by the critics as Venezuela’s first environmental artwork. To a certain extent, Reticulárea unsettled the viewers, and the interest of this review lies in the reaction, since the journalist who wrote this piece detected two contradictory views at the heart of this impressive work. On the one hand, the work is described as having “fragile lines that are subtle and almost lyrical.” On the other, the writer sees the image of a hallucinatory spider’s web that seems to have come from an “appalling nightmare.” The spider’s web image would be a leitmotif starting from the earliest reviews of the Reticulárea in that same year, 1969; it would prevail whether those webs were considered “friendly” (Lourdes Blanco) or as in this case, completely the opposite: a “nightmare.” This review is one of the few documents in which the Reticulárea is associated with extreme negativity and horror. In general, the work of the weaving and the spider’s web would be linked to the Reticulárea and its creator as an incarnation of mythic weavers, whose archetype is undoubtedly Penelope. It is about the beauty implied by fragility, force, and equilibrium. More recently, to the extent that Gego’s work has been disseminated, these themes will be explored in further depth by international art scholars in more detailed academic essays.