Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) emphatically objected to classifying her three-dimensional works as “sculpture,” thus expressing the singularity of her approach and the gulf that separates it from traditional ideas about art and its parameters. Greater light is shed on her ideas in the rest of her writings on this subject, and obviously in her work. Gego objected to the “solid material” aspect of sculpture because she was aiming for the exact opposite in her three-dimensional work, as we know from other examples of her writing: her goal was total “transparency.” (Cf: Gego, “No sé de donde viene” [I Don’t Know Where It Comes From], 1981, and “Entrevista con Gego realizada el 17/4/81, 1981” [Gego Interview 4/17/81, 1981]).
According to the author, her work could not be classified within the traditional parameters of sculpture, so Gego takes an avant-garde approach and baptizes her three-dimensional works with the name “bichos” [bugs], which was the heading she wrote in the notebooks she used to keep track of her three-dimensional pieces. In current Venezuelan Spanish it means “contraption” as well as insect. It is also a disparaging term, with which Gego divests her works of any hint of formality.
This document was reprinted in: María Elena Huizi and Josefina Manrique (organizers), Sabiduras y otros textos de Gego / Sabiduras and Other Texts by Gego (Houston: International Center for the Arts of the Americas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Fundación Gego, 2005).