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SERIEN PERSPEKTIVWECHSEL • CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE
Foto: © Universitätsarchiv Stuttgart
Gegos Studienregisterkarte: Das Gelb stand für Jüdin, der rote Balken für Frau • Gego’s student card 1960, MoMA in New York purchased a first work by the artist – just a few years after
Foto in Gegos Belegbuch der TH Stuttgart, 1932 • Photo in Gego’s course-attendance book, TH Stuttgart, 1932 ternationally called her back into memory again. Since then, her work has been ex-
Foto: © Archivo Fundación Gego
Gegos UCV-Visitenkarte, 1960 • Gego’s UCV calling card, 1960 She was familiar with ideas on the temporal expansion of rooms from Bodo Rasch
Foto: Stefanie Reisinger © Archivo Fundación Gego
052 • AIT 9.2022
r You call Gego a universal artist …
Gego planned, constructed, drew, printed, wove, made objects, created room-span-
ning installations – the so-called „Reticulárea“ – and built large-format works in public
space. She created works on all scales and in all the artistic media. Her work is that
of an architect, a painter, a draughtswoman, a graphic artist and a sculptress. She
never wanted her three-dimensional works to be called sculptures but, rather, struc-
tures. I think this shows quite clearly how diverse and reflecting she was. There are
formal references in the medium of drawing and printed graphics which can clearly
be derived from line method and hatching techniques she had learned in Stuttgart.
Conceptual considerations helped to plan the shadow effecs. There are all sorts of ex-
amples which prove Gego’s training as an architect. In her artistic practice, she knows
how to deliberately and, at the same time, playfully use the skills she had gained.
r Which is the significance Gego had and still has internationally and which are
the exhibitions that were and are dedicated to her worldwide?
Gego ranks among the most important male and female artists of Latin America. In
her lifetime, she was well known to all in North- and South America; already around
she had started being active in art at all. In the early 2000s, hence after her death,
the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston showed a first major Gego retrospective and in-
hibited worldwide. In 2013 and in 2014, the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart showed a tra-
velling survey exhibition of Gego’s work together with the Henry Moore Institute in
Leeds and the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. In October, a comprehensive Gego retrospec-
tive will follow in Mexico which had started out in São Paulo prior to the pandemic.
Further destinations will be the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao.
r Which are the works in interiors and in public space which Gego has been
able to realize in Venezuela and which are the ones that have been preserved
to this day?
Between 1958 and 1983, Gego “built” none works in the public space of Caracas. Two
of these works have been lost, two have been dismantled and are now being stored,
the remaining five are partly in a disastrous state. Gego’s “parallel architectures” have
hardly been researched to date. I was already able to take first steps towards this
goal. In the context of a research trip to Venezuela and a subsequent project seminar
at Stuttgart University, in cooperation with Professor Dr Kerstin Thomas and Professor
of art history and of architectural history. In the course of this, model-like objects have
Dr Klaus Jan Philipp we examined these works together with students of the institute
been produced which were also shown in my exhibition entitled “Gego. The Architec-
ture of an Artist”. Starting in 1969, Gego started to develop her probably best-known
group of works called „Reticulárea“: An expansive installation which considered the
movements of the spectators through this net-like structure to be an essential part.
and Heinz Wetzel in Stuttgart, among others. That same year, the group of works was
also shown in New York. The last large „Reticulárea“ was constructed in the Alte Oper
in Frankfurt in 1982. The latter work is thought to be lost today. Such a site-specific
work has been preserved in Caracas in the Museo de Bellas Artes. This is where, in
1977, Gego had designed her own specific room for a permanent presentation. Unfor-
tunately, the room has been closed for some years. They are, however, working on
opening it again.
r What can young male and female architects today learn from Gego? Which
are the traits which made it possible for her to fight her way through her pro-
fessional life?
I believe that Gego’s versatility in handling different media and materials and her clear,
space – are aspects that can be an inspiration for many. On the practical side, she al-
sensitive, site-specific thinking – which, above all, shows in her works for the public
ways succeeded in adjusting to the demands and the given situation which, on the one
hand, proves a high flexibility and, on the other, her works and her way of working have
never lost precision. It seems to me that this combination made it possible for her to
create and oeuvre which is extremely clear without losing complexity. I am also convin-
ced that Gego not only had strong manual skills but that, above all, she had sense of
humour as well. This is why her works are often characterized with a playful lightness.