Gego

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the German mechanical engineer and equestrian sports official, see Arno Gego .

Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt (born August 1, 1912 in Hamburg ; died September 17, 1994 in Caracas ; pseudonym GEGO ) was a German- Venezuelan sculptor , installation artist , architect and draftsman . She became known for her abstract drawings, three-dimensional works and her wire-networked constructions. Gego's most successful works were created in the 1960s and 1970s.

Life

Most of the information about Gego's biography comes from her personal estate. After her death, the Fundación Gego Foundation, founded in Caracas, received a suitcase in which she had kept personal documents all her life. These included biographical questionnaires from Frithjof Trapp, a specialist in exile literature from 1933 to 1945, who carried out studies on the exile and emigration of Jews in Hamburg and in 1987 asked Gego to fill out some of his questionnaires. However, she did not return the questionnaires after completing them. The book Sabidurías and other texts by Gego was created in 2005 from the biographical questionnaires and personal documents , which was published in English and Spanish.

First phase of life in Germany

Gego's great-grandfather founded the “Goldschmidt & Sohn” banking house in 1815, and her uncle Adolph Goldschmidt was a successful German art historian. Gego was the sixth of seven children. First she attended a public school, later she was homeschooled. Then she switched to a private school. On her first attempt, Gego failed the external high school diploma.

From 1932 to 1938 she studied architecture at the Technical University of Stuttgart , after having been very interested in art as a child. In August 1938 Gego realized that at that time, in Germany, she was in a dangerous situation because she came from a Jewish family. Paul Bonatz was one of the many professors with whom she completed her architecture studies, and this and a few other university professors helped to finish and evaluate her work as quickly as possible so that she received her diploma promptly, with the aim of getting work outside of Germany to apply.

Second stage of life in Venezuela

After Gego had successfully completed her architecture studies in 1938, she applied with her diploma to all potential emigration countries for a work permit. Gego didn't want to go to the USA for personal reasons. Time was of the essence as the situation in Germany became more and more dangerous for Gego too. In 1938, the day after the Reichspogromnacht , she barely escaped access by the Nazis in Munich. In March 1939, her parents emigrated on a visa for England . Since Gego still had to stay in Germany, she arranged the sale and liquidation of the family's property. A few weeks later, she received a job offer from Caracas , Venezuela.

Gego left Germany and traveled by ship to her family in Southampton , England. However, since she only had a transit visa for England, she had to travel on to Venezuela. Once on site, Gego quickly realized that she had to look for work on her own because the job offer no longer existed. Several months later, in 1940, her endeavors were successful and she was given a position in an architecture firm, where she worked as an architect and was responsible for the construction of public buildings in Caracas.

A few months later she met her future husband Ernst Gunz through contacts with German emigrants. Together they founded a carpentry and lamp workshop. They had two children. In 1951 the couple separated. In 1952 Gego received the Venezuelan citizenship and met Gerd Leufert, who had moved to Venezuela in 1951 because of the oil's wealth. Since they got along very well both privately and artistically, they spent the rest of their lives together.

In the following six years Gego worked increasingly on her drawings and sculptures until she began teaching sculpture at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Cristobal Rojas . From 1961 to 1967 she was professor of watercolor and gouache at the architecture and urban development faculty of the Universidad Central de Venezuela and from 1964 to 1977 as a lecturer at the Instituto de Diseño in Caracas, which she co-founded. This was followed by numerous stays in the USA and Europe, where Gego presented her work.

Gego died in Caracas on September 17, 1994, at the age of 82. Thereupon the Fundación Gego was founded , which manages her estate.

Working method

In 1953, after moving from Caracas to Tarma, Gego painted watercolors, drew landscapes and started making woodcuts . A year later she presented two of these works in the exhibition XV Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolana .

After a long stay abroad, Gego began to experiment with three-dimensional works and sculptures made of wire, ropes and rods.

Her training as an architect shaped her work. As an architect, the relationship to space was most important to her, there is no element in her work that is not subordinate to the relationship to space. As an engineer, Gego devoted herself to the technical problems that arose when she wanted to implement her works made of wire, ropes and rods according to her ideas. As an artist, she kept surprising her by managing to bring a touch of disorder, dynamism and poetry into her work, despite the strict requirements of the room. The Latin American art critic Marta Traba said in 1974: "Without this technical-professional basis, it would not have been possible for her to realize her work."

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

• 1961: Dibujos recientes de Gego , Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas
• 1967: Gego.Esculturas , Galería Conkright, Caracas
• 1969: Reticulárea , Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas
• 1970: Gego. Drawings , The Graphics Gallery, San Francisco
• 1971: Gego. Sculpture and Drawing , Betty Parsons Gallery, New York
• 1977: Gego , Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Caracas
• 1984: Dibujos sin papel , Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas
• 1985: 5.85 (Dibujos sin papel) , Museo de Barquisimeto, Barquisimeto
• 1990: Tejeduras , Galería Sotavento, Caracas
• 1994: Gego, una mirada a su obra , Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Caracas
• 2000/2001: Gego 1955-2000 , Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Caracas
• 2012: Gego: Origin and Encounter, Mastering the Space , Americas Society, New York
• 2013: Line as Object. Serial Attitudes: Repetition as a Method since the 1960s , Kunsthalle Hamburg ; Catalog.
• 2014: Line as Object. Stuttgart Art Museum

Group exhibitions

• 1954: XV Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano , Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas
• 1955: Venezuelan impressions 1954 , Galerie Wolfgang Gurlitt , Munich
• 1959: Pintura y escultura de profesores de la Faculdad de Arquitectura , Universidad Central de Venezuela , Caracas
• 1960: Recent Sculpture , David Herbert Gallery, New York
• 1960/1961: Section Eleven (New Names) , Betty Parsons Gallery, New York
• 1963: Pintura geométrica venezolana 1950–1960 , Galería de Arte del INCIBA, Caracas
• 1964: One Hundred Contemporary Prints - Pratt Graphic Art Center , Jewish Museum , New York
• 1965: The Responsive Eye , The Museum of Modern Art , New York
• 1966: Art of Latin America since Independence , Yale University Art Gallery , New Haven
• 1967: Recent Latin American Art , The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1968: New Dimension in Lithography. An Exhibition Recently Selected from the Tamarind Lithography Workshop , Fisher and Quinn Galleries, Southern California University
• 1969: El arte cinético y sus orígenes , Ateneo de Caracas, Caracas
• 1969/1970: Latin America. New Paintings and Sculpture. Juan Downey , Agustín Fernández, Gego, Gabriel Morera, Center for Inter-AmericanRelations Art Gallery, New York
• 1971: Tamarind. A Renaissance of Lithography. A Loan Exhibition from the Tamarind Lithography , International Foundation, California
• 1975: Relaciones y contrastes en la pintura venzolana , Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Gego, Otero y Negret, Galería Adler Castillo, Caracas
• 1976: Las artes plásticas en Venezuela , Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas
• 1978: Pequeña historia del dibujo en Venezuela , Estudio Actual, Caracas
• 1982: Spielraum - Raumspiele , Alte Oper , Frankfurt am Main
• 1986: Caracas urbana , Museo de Arte La Rinconada, Caracas
• 1988–1990: The Latin Spirit. Art and Artists in the United States 1920-1970 , The Bronx Museum of Art, New York
• 1992: Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century , Plaza de Armas, Seville
• 1996/1997: Inside the Visible. An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art (in, of, and from the Feminine) , The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
• 1997–1999: Re-Aligning Vision. Alternative currents in South American Drawing , The Neighborhood Museum, New York
• 1999/2000: The Experimental Exercise of Freedom. Lygia Clark , Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Hélio Oiticica and Mira Schendel , The Museum of Contemporary Art , Los Angeles
• 2000: Force Fields. Phases of the Kinetic , Hayward Gallery, London
• 2000/2001: Heterotopías. Medio siglo sin lugar 1918–1968 , Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía , Madrid
• 2001: Geometric Abstraction. Latin American Art in the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection , Fogg Art Museum , Harvard University.

Awards

• National Prize of Venezuela, for her drawing at the XIX Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolana
• Venezuela's National Prize for Fine Arts

literature

• Goldschmidt, Gertrud Louise , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 393

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laura Held: Lines that dissolve reality. Life and work of Gertrude Goldschmidt, called Gego. (No longer available online.) Www.ila-bonn.de, September 15, 2010, archived from the original on May 12, 2014 ; Retrieved December 17, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt). Museum of Modern Art , Oxford University Press, 2009, accessed December 17, 2012 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Gego. Biography. Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2012, accessed on December 17, 2012 . 
4. ^ Norbert Becker: Gertrud Goldschmidt (1912–1994). Artist in Venezuela. Stuttgart University Archives, September 1, 2011, accessed on December 17, 2012 . 
5. ^ Gego: Origin and Encounter, Mastering the Space
6. ↑ Description of the exhibition on the website of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, accessed on May 10, 2014.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gego in the catalog of the German National Library