Gego, 1957-1988: Thinking the Line

by Nadja Rottner (Editor), Peter Weibel (Editor)

Venezuelan sculptor Gertrud Luise Goldschmidt (1912-1994), who worked under the pseudonym Gego, was one of the most important representatives of Latin American Geometric Abstractionism. Born in Germany, Goldschmidt became an architect and later immigrated to Caracas in 1939, where she radically altered the nature of modernist sculpture, countering the deductive logic of 1960s abstraction with a fluid conceptualism, reconfiguring "content-less" art into an open-ended process of "thinking the line." The most comprehensive examination of Gego's art published in English to date, this monograph contains deep analyses by scholars from a range of disciplines as well as previously untranslated historical texts, offering new perspectives on Gego's critical relationships to Venezuelan urbanism and kineticism, the New York avant-garde, and the European modernist traditions of Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. Includes an illustrated chronology and an extensive plate section featuring three decades of sculpture and drawings.

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2006

Reviews

[Kerfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across Gego's art by accident anf was immediately intrigued by the similarity of her use of line in sculpture and drawing to the threads of weaving and embroidery.

The text in this book is really technically and densely philosopical rather than artistic--heavy going although it does discuss some interesting ideas. I'm not sure how much it really has to do with Gego's art, or the appreciation of it, in the end, unless art is for you an intellectual exercise rather than an experience.

But there are plenty of illustrations of Gego's work--from the weblike Reticulareas to the Dibujos Sin Rapel (drawings without paper). Of course a photo of a 3-dimensional work can never recreate the experience of actually seeing it, but even in a secondary view the works are full of ideas and life. I thought immediately of Calder, and several of the essayists also make that connection. But even though her primary medium is wire, Gego manages to produce a fragility and interlocking structure that echoes strongly fiber and textiles.

Very inspirational.