This brief essay by the curator Lourdes Blanco (b. 1941) appeared in the handout produced for the first exhibition of Reticulárea, the installation created by the German-born Venezuelan artist Gego [Gertrud Goldschmidt] (1912–94), at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in June and July, 1969. The leaflet was published by the Galería Conkright in Caracas, which represented the artist at that time.
This is the very earliest description of the Reticulárea, the installation that many considered the most important step in Gego’s career, one that heralded a radically different approach in her artistic development and ushered in a new phase in her work. Blanco had witnessed the work take shape, evolving from a small piece of netting hanging in the Museo de Bellas Artes to a huge installation designed for a specific location. Her concept of “planning and spontaneity” would become a guiding principle and a recurring theme in Gego’s creative process. That same year (1969) the installation traveled to New York to be shown in a tent at Latin America: New Paintings and Sculpture. Juan Downey, Agustín Fernández, Gego, and Gabriel Morera, the exhibition at the Center for Inter-American Relations, for which Blanco wrote a longer version of her essay. The Reticulárea was assembled and disassembled in Caracas on several occasions, and is currently part of the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas) Collection, where it is housed in its own permanent space.
Regarding the work in question, see the review “Reticulárea: ambiente de Gego inaugura hoy el Museo” [doc. no. 1158935], and the review “Reticulárea: redes metálicas de Gego en un ambiente del museo” [doc. no. 1159960], both published in 1969; the review written in 1981 “Gego y sus telas de araña” [doc. no. 1148090]; and the leaflet produced by the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas) “Gego, Reticulárea: exposición permanente” [doc. no. 1159255]; see also the most recent anthology devoted to this work, Untangling the Web: Gego’s “Reticulárea,” an Anthology of Critical Response (Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston / International Center for the Arts of the Americas, 2013), organized by María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin, and edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Melina Kervandjian.