Bélgica Rodríguez begins this article, “Cálculo y espontaneidad,” with a brief account of Gego’s life: her studies in engineering and architecture at the Technische Schule von Stuttgart, her arrival in Venezuela in 1939, and her early jobs and experiences there as a teacher, as well as exhibitions in which she participated and won prizes. Rodríguez goes on to list Gego’s works—some of them collaborative projects for urban spaces produced with her life partner, Lithuanian graphic designer Gerd Leufert—and where they are found. The author addresses specifically Reticulárea (1969)—an environment where the three dimensions of architecture take the shape of a repeating wire module. Rodríguez argues that Gego’s work is a synthesis of knowledge of architecture and visual sensibility. The manipulation of the materials in this work reflects, or is even the same as, a manipulation of space and time.        

Entitled “Cálculo y espontaneidad,” this brief article on German-born Venezuelan artist Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) by Venezuelan critic, curator, and longstanding educator Bélgica Rodríguez (b. 1941) is informative and educational; it is ideal for the general public and for students. The text provides an overview of Gego’s life: her technical and professional training in Germany, the work she did after she arrived in Venezuela in 1939, and mostly, the way her body of work links architecture and art. Rodríguez also provides information on Gego’s major works in public spaces (institutions and buildings) in Caracas (or at least, at those sites in 1972, when the article was written), as well as the prestigious architects who designed many of the buildings in which her work is found.

The title of the article comes from a text written by Miguel Arroyo, the director of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, on the occasion of the installation of Gego’s Reticulárea at that museum (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1969). Indeed, that was the first time that work was installed.

The sentence that Rodríguez cites reads, “[…] when joined by the artist’s hand, polished stainless steel or enameled steel triangles of different size give shape to a work that appears functional in conception. But what it is actually at stake is calculation and spontaneity merging together to create true peaceful magic […].”

On the work Reticulárea, see the reviews: “Reticulárea: ambiente de Gego inaugura hoy el Museo” (ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1158935), published in La Religión in 1969; “Reticulárea: redes metálicas de Gego en un ambiente del museo” (doc. no. 1159960), published in El Nacional in 1969; and “Gego y sus telas de araña” (doc. no. 1148090), published in El Diario de Caracas in 1981. See also “Gego, Reticulárea: exposición permanente” (doc. no. 1159255), the wall text at the Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas (GAN), and more recently, an anthology on this pioneering work entitled Untangling the Web: Gego’s Reticulárea, An Anthology of Critical Response (Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 2013), organized by María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin, and edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Melina Kervandjian.