Gego
Venezuelan-German
(1912–1994)
Gertrud Goldschmidt (known as Gego) emigrated to Caracas from Germany in 1939. Having studied architecture and engineering in Stuttgart, she did not initially pursue art until around 1953. Her earliest drawings show the influence of her training; they explore the effects produced by parallel and intersecting lines on paper and in space. In 1969, she began what she termed her Reticulárea series constructed of interconnected steel wires. The first of these works, Reticulárea ambientación was installed at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Chile as an immersive installation that allowed visitors to, in effect, walk through her drawing in space.
Her major contribution to art is as simple as it is relevant: she took the rationality of geometry into a lyrical world, a world of openness and possibility. The tropical and exuberant landscape of Venezuela surely played a role. She transformed hard industrial materials such as iron or steel, and made them light, ethereal, mobile. She worked with the language of geometry and rationality: pure forms, squares and triangles; platonic solids, pyramids, cubes, spheres.
Gego’s art emerged through her engagement with line, whether drawn in ink on paper or composed of string and metal wires suspended in midair. Fascinated by transparency and the potential of negative space, she attributed her artistic innovations to her discovery of “the charm of line in and of itself — the line in space as well as the line drawn on a surface, and the nothing between the lines and the sparkling when they cross.”
Líneas
1966
Lithographs on Japanese paper bound in hardcover book
Gego’s Linéas (1966), a portfolio of twelve lithographs, explores the expressive potential of the hand-drawn line through repetition, variation, and color. Gego created this book during her residency at the Los Angeles Tamarind Lithography Workshop.
Gego studied architecture in Germany before becoming a refugee to save her life. She worked with the language of geometry and rationality: pure forms, squares and triangles; platonic solids, pyramids, cubes, spheres. She then landed in tropical Venezuela. In my take, Gego takes the elements of pure reason and builds something entirely organic, sensible, even exuberant. In this piece, she constructs triangles and pyramids in space; but it looks like a fantastical creature or insect. She liberates rationality through a sensibility that I claim only a woman could have done, by making something natural and human with geometry.
Sin título (Reticulárea)
1969–1970
iron, wire, nylon, and weights
93 1/4 × 35 × 27 1/2 in. / 236.9 × 88.9 × 69 cm
The Reticulareas are Gego’s most important and emblematic body of work. The first works from this series were presented as room-sized, immersive installations that the viewer was able to walk through. Using primarily stainless-steel wire, Gego wove an intricate, net-like environment which both obscured and revealed the museum space while demanding the fundamental, active participation of the viewer’s eyes, mind, and body. The first was installed at the Museo de Bellas Artes en Caracas in 1969.
Gego
Venezuelan-German
(1912–1994)
Gertrud Goldschmidt (known as Gego) emigrated to Caracas from Germany in 1939. Having studied architecture and engineering in Stuttgart, she did not initially pursue art until around 1953. Her earliest drawings show the influence of her training; they explore the effects produced by parallel and intersecting lines on paper and in space. In 1969, she began what she termed her Reticulárea series constructed of interconnected steel wires. The first of these works, Reticulárea ambientación was installed at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Chile as an immersive installation that allowed visitors to, in effect, walk through her drawing in space.
Her major contribution to art is as simple as it is relevant: she took the rationality of geometry into a lyrical world, a world of openness and possibility. The tropical and exuberant landscape of Venezuela surely played a role. She transformed hard industrial materials such as iron or steel, and made them light, ethereal, mobile. She worked with the language of geometry and rationality: pure forms, squares and triangles; platonic solids, pyramids, cubes, spheres.
Gego’s art emerged through her engagement with line, whether drawn in ink on paper or composed of string and metal wires suspended in midair. Fascinated by transparency and the potential of negative space, she attributed her artistic innovations to her discovery of “the charm of line in and of itself — the line in space as well as the line drawn on a surface, and the nothing between the lines and the sparkling when they cross.”
Líneas
1966
Lithographs on Japanese paper bound in hardcover book
Gego’s Linéas (1966), a portfolio of twelve lithographs, explores the expressive potential of the hand-drawn line through repetition, variation, and color. Gego created this book during her residency at the Los Angeles Tamarind Lithography Workshop.
Gego studied architecture in Germany before becoming a refugee to save her life. She worked with the language of geometry and rationality: pure forms, squares and triangles; platonic solids, pyramids, cubes, spheres. She then landed in tropical Venezuela. In my take, Gego takes the elements of pure reason and builds something entirely organic, sensible, even exuberant. In this piece, she constructs triangles and pyramids in space; but it looks like a fantastical creature or insect. She liberates rationality through a sensibility that I claim only a woman could have done, by making something natural and human with geometry.
Sin título (Reticulárea)
1969–1970
iron, wire, nylon, and weights
93 1/4 × 35 × 27 1/2 in. / 236.9 × 88.9 × 69 cm
The Reticulareas are Gego’s most important and emblematic body of work. The first works from this series were presented as room-sized, immersive installations that the viewer was able to walk through. Using primarily stainless-steel wire, Gego wove an intricate, net-like environment which both obscured and revealed the museum space while demanding the fundamental, active participation of the viewer’s eyes, mind, and body. The first was installed at the Museo de Bellas Artes en Caracas in 1969.
Gego
Venezuelan-German
(1912–1994)
Gertrud Goldschmidt (known as Gego) emigrated to Caracas from Germany in 1939. Having studied architecture and engineering in Stuttgart, she did not initially pursue art until around 1953. Her earliest drawings show the influence of her training; they explore the effects produced by parallel and intersecting lines on paper and in space. In 1969, she began what she termed her Reticulárea series constructed of interconnected steel wires. The first of these works, Reticulárea ambientación was installed at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Chile as an immersive installation that allowed visitors to, in effect, walk through her drawing in space.
Her major contribution to art is as simple as it is relevant: she took the rationality of geometry into a lyrical world, a world of openness and possibility. The tropical and exuberant landscape of Venezuela surely played a role. She transformed hard industrial materials such as iron or steel, and made them light, ethereal, mobile. She worked with the language of geometry and rationality: pure forms, squares and triangles; platonic solids, pyramids, cubes, spheres.
Gego’s art emerged through her engagement with line, whether drawn in ink on paper or composed of string and metal wires suspended in midair. Fascinated by transparency and the potential of negative space, she attributed her artistic innovations to her discovery of “the charm of line in and of itself — the line in space as well as the line drawn on a surface, and the nothing between the lines and the sparkling when they cross.”
Líneas
1966
Lithographs on Japanese paper bound in hardcover book
Gego’s Linéas (1966), a portfolio of twelve lithographs, explores the expressive potential of the hand-drawn line through repetition, variation, and color. Gego created this book during her residency at the Los Angeles Tamarind Lithography Workshop.
Gego studied architecture in Germany before becoming a refugee to save her life. She worked with the language of geometry and rationality: pure forms, squares and triangles; platonic solids, pyramids, cubes, spheres. She then landed in tropical Venezuela. In my take, Gego takes the elements of pure reason and builds something entirely organic, sensible, even exuberant. In this piece, she constructs triangles and pyramids in space; but it looks like a fantastical creature or insect. She liberates rationality through a sensibility that I claim only a woman could have done, by making something natural and human with geometry.
Sin título (Reticulárea)
1969–1970
iron, wire, nylon, and weights
93 1/4 × 35 × 27 1/2 in. / 236.9 × 88.9 × 69 cm
The Reticulareas are Gego’s most important and emblematic body of work. The first works from this series were presented as room-sized, immersive installations that the viewer was able to walk through. Using primarily stainless-steel wire, Gego wove an intricate, net-like environment which both obscured and revealed the museum space while demanding the fundamental, active participation of the viewer’s eyes, mind, and body. The first was installed at the Museo de Bellas Artes en Caracas in 1969.
© 2025 Kanbas. Any images or other visual representations of artworks are © their respective Artist or Estate, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
© 2025 Kanbas. Any images or other visual representations of artworks are © their respective Artist or Estate, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.