This text was written by Venezuelan critic and curator Mariana Figarella (1959–1996) for the catalogue to the exhibition Gego: Dibujos sin papel held at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Caracas from June to August 1984. This was the first major exhibition of Dibujos sin papel, a series that Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) began in 1976; these works would establish a new phase in Gego’s work. A small selection of early Dibujos sin papel had been exhibited in the show Gego, held at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Caracas in 1977. That show provided an overview of the three-dimensional works that Gego had produced until that time. In this text, Figarella specifies the difference between the conception of this new phase of Gego’s work and earlier periods. As critic Hanni Ossott observed in her 1977 essay, “La Obra: espacio para un acontecer,” in the Dibujos sin papel series there is no structural layout, let alone a construction design. In this essay, Figarella discusses the spontaneous (nonsystematic and even random) nature of these new works, as well as their experimental aesthetic due to the use of new materials, mostly industrial waste and remains of earlier works. Figarella does however acknowledge continuity in the use of the line as a basic element common to all Gego’s three-dimensional works, regardless of when they were produced; she also emphasizes the “drawing-like essence” of Gego’s work. Significantly, the illustrations for this catalogue were made by Gego herself. Indeed, the two-dimensional representation of these works produces further confusion about their genre: though drawings without paper that originally operated in three-dimensional space, they can be faithfully rendered by the artist on paper, that is, in two dimensions.
