Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This text was written for the series Art of Latin America Today: Venezuela by the critic and art historian Clara Diament Sujo. The text historically summarized the development of contemporary art in Venezuela from the Pre-Columbian, colonial, and [...]

The Venezuelan curator and critic Lourdes Blanco analyzes Reticulárea, 1969, the installation created by the German-born Venezuelan artist, Gego. Blanco sees this work as the product of a process of “calculation and spontaneity” that is utterly [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon. However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

The subject of the essay, “Todo final es un comienzo” [Every End is a Beginning], is the Reticuláreas by the Venezuelan artist originally from Germany, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994). The text emphasizes the developmental process of [...]

Mari Carmen Ramírez and the North American curator Edith A. Gibson curated Re-Aligning Vision. Alternative Currents in South American Drawing, the exhibition which was organized by the Archer Huntington Gallery in Austin, Texas. Gibson writes about [...]

Curator Kaira Marie Cabañas argues that work by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, constitutes a “performative geometry” based on a primordial interest in the act of “making.” The configuration of [...]

This article has a title as well as a subtitle: “Gego: The Great Weaver is Gone. The Winner of the National Visual Arts Prize 1979 Died Yesterday in Caracas.” The writer and arts journalist Eloi Yagüe Jarque made this written tribute to Gego [...]

Marta Traba analyzes the special characteristics of Gego’s visual language by studying the public works rendered by the artist in Caracas. In her opinion, Gego’s work is based on an understanding of the structures that underlie nature and how [...]

In her essay, “Escultura I: Más sobre Gego” [Sculpture I: More on Gego], Marta Traba writes an overview of twentieth-century sculpture, paying special attention to modern sculpture. She states that the history of modern sculpture [...]

This text describes the most outstanding characteristics of the works created by Gego during her involvement with the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles, California, in 1966. The article explains that Gego’s line, a predominant element in [...]

Robert Storr analyzes Gego’s work in the formal milieu in which it was created. The curator begins with an introduction in which he provides the essential information about her life, her late training as an artist, and the influence of Paul Klee [...]

This document is the first edition (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, 1979) of the book, Variaciones sobre reticuláreas, [Variations on Reticuláreas], a poem by Alfredo Silva Estrada. Silva Estrada wrote the poem as an homage to Gego on the [...]

Elízabeth Schön describes the works of Gego from a poetic perspective. Regarding the artist’s drawings, Schön emphasizes the spareness of the forms generated by unrestricted freedom, art created for the sole purpose of [...]

In her introduction to the catalog for the exhibition, The Experimental Exercise of Freedom at the MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1999–2000), the curator Alma Ruiz explains that the purpose of the exhibition is to show [...]

Bélgica Rodríguez analyzes the reasons why Gego’s work has achieved significance. To Rodríguez, what is most important about this work may be found in the constant movement of her drawings in space, free from physical and [...]

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 [...]

The review by Ras (Eduardo Robles Piquer), published in the Revista Nacional de Cultura [National Cultural Review], Caracas, July/August/September 1969, comments on the most important cultural events of the month. It starts out with two exhibitions: [...]

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 [...]

This essay on Gego’s work, Reticulárea (1969) by Gabriela Rangel was published in 2006 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the visual arts program at the Americas Society (New York). This is the institution previously known as the Center for Inter [...]

This is an essay on Gego’s work written by Gabriela Rangel. It emphasizes the international acclaim the artist’s work generated starting in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The recent success is proven by the international [...]

María Elena Ramos analyzes Gego’s work Reticulárea as a metaphor of nature. As the curator sees it, Reticulárea grows incessantly just as organic forms do, open to the space around it. Like other natural forms, it maintains [...]

In her essay, “Un legado a las ideas de arte en el nuevo milenio” [A Legacy for Ideas on Art in the New Millennium], María Elena Ramos sets forth the hypothesis that the Venezuelan artists, Jesús Rafael Soto, Alejandro Otero, and Gego may be [...]

This essay was written by Mari Carmen Ramírez, director of the department of Latin American art at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Gego and presented (as a lecture) at the symposium, Questioning the Line: Gego in Context / Cuestionando la Lí [...]

Mari Carmen Ramírez investigates the theme of “transparency” as a basic element of Gego’s drawings. Ramírez asserts that both Gego’s drawings and her constructions are expressed in a perceptibly ambiguous plane. In fact, they result from [...]

The journalist Raquel Chonchol wrote under the pseudonym, “Ray Ponte,” for The Daily Journal, a Venezuelan English language newspaper. She reviewed this exhibition on the occasion of a visit by some high-profile members of The International [...]

Sandra Pinardi describes the qualities of line and drawing in Gego’s work. In the critic’s opinion, by virtue of the multiple directions in which it heads, Gego’s “immaterial line” reveals a dense and plural space. Thus [...]

This is an essay on Gego’s artwork published to accompany the exhibition, Desafiando Estructuras [Challenging Structures] (MACBA, Barcelona/Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal, 2006) by Iris Peruga. It starts out with biographical information on the [...]

The artist, curator, and researcher from Costa Rica, Virginia Pérez Ratton, describes the exhibition A contra corriente [Against the Current] that took place at Galería TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica in 2005 and which included works by Lygia Pape , Gego [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas analyzes Gego’s work in light of what he considers her contribution to the history of visual art. The critic considers [the source of] that contribution to be the different artistic milieu in which her artistic life [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas considers Gego the most important artist in Venezuelan modern art. In his opinion, her work broke through the conventional limits and was situated at the margin of the national art scene as “a work of critical importance [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas describes Gego’s body of work. The curator identifies the artist’s early work in the category of geometric abstraction; however, as she developed, she moved toward an approach that was “organic and [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas believed that as a foreigner in Venezuela, Gego gave her work the function of an “analytical process” by constructing a “neutral space” in a time saturated by Kinetic art and geometric abstraction. Her work resists [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas analyzes a fragment of modern Latin American art history, presented through the form of “penetrable” works. The critic describes the development of the form with respect to its representation as [...]

The Venezuelan curator and critic, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas, speaking from a poetic perspective, highlights the relevance of “knots” (nodes) or “knottings” as singular elements in Gego’s visual discourse. The critic sees the knottings in [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas discusses the typology of Latin American modern art that is designed “to be penetrated” by the viewer, based on an analysis of major works by three Latin American women artists: Brazilians Lygia Clark and [...]

Under the subtitle “Gego,” José María Parreño devotes this section of his essay “De una diversa fragilidad” [From a Diverse Fragility] to Gego, which he wrote for the exhibition Frágil [Fragile] (Segovia, Spain: Museo de Arte Contemporá [...]

Hanni Ossott introduces Gego’s exhibition Gego: Dibujos para proyectos [Gego: Drawings for Projects], which includes the artist’s architectural, design, and art projects from 1937 to 1975. The critic suggests that during her training as an [...]

John O’Connor reviews the exhibition Latin America: New Paintings and Sculpture. Juan Downey, Agustín Fernández, Gego, and Gabriel Morera (New York: Art Gallery of the Center for Inter-American Relations, 1969). O’Connor acknowledges the [...]

Roberto Montero Castro wrote this review at the time of Gego’s exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [Contemporary Art Museum] in Caracas in 1977. He referred to the idea expressed by Pythagorean philosophers—that numbers are an [...]

Roberto Montero Castro reviews Gego’s exhibition based on his conversation with the artist in the room where her Reticulárea (1969) was installed for a group show at the Galería de Arte Nacional [National Art Gallery] (GAN, 1977). He describes [...]

Roberto Montero Castro reviews the inaugural exhibition of Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas. Montero describes this particular work as an important achievement in which science has been [...]

Yasmín Monsalve interviews Gego and discusses the artist’s latest project, the series known as Tejeduras [Weavings]. Monsalve mentions certain facets of Gego’s life—such as her arrival in Venezuela and her architectural- [...]

In this article, Yasmín Monsalve reports on Gego’s presence at the Twenty-third São Paulo Biennial in 1996, and on her exhibition Gego. Dibujos. Dibujos, grabados y tejeduras [Gego Drawings: Drawings, Prints, and Weavings] presented that same [...]

In this essay titled, “Un año para celebrar a Gego” [A Year in Which to Celebrate Gego], the journalist Carmen Victoria Méndez from the newspaper El Nacional (Caracas) reviews the main cultural events on the 2012 calendar in [...]

Luis Fernando Lucena reviews Gego’s lithographic works. The Colombian writer describes these works by Gego as atemporal and in a permanent state of activity, with no beginning or end. He also suggests that it is impossible and unnecessary to [...]

In this review of the opening of Gego’s exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [Contemporary Art Museum] in Caracas in 1977, Luis Lozada Soucre reports on the great, well-attended event. He quotes Marta Traba, and interviews people in [...]

In this essay, Glenn D. Lowry discusses his reaction when in Venezuela in 2000, he discovered Gego’s work, having only ever seen a few of her sculptures and prints. He claims that he would have liked to meet her, and lists the questions he would [...]

Juan Ledezma compares the aesthetic strategies that Gego used to create shape in space.  Leaning on theories suggested by Jürgen Habermas, who classifies modern forms of reason, Ledezma analyzes the “formative logic” of Gego’s constructions [...]

Hilton Kramer reviews the exhibition Latin America: New Paintings and Sculpture. Juan Downey, Agustín Fernández, Gego, and Gabriel Morera, presented at the Art Gallery of the Center for Inter-American Relations in 1969. Kramer mentions the fact [...]

In her weekly newspaper column, “Criticandito,” published on June 17, 1979 (in La Verdad, Caracas), Sofía Imber discusses four cultural events, two of which were at the Galería Mendoza, in Caracas: Guaches de la aldea de la India Madhubani [ [...]