Gertrude goldschmidt picture biography gego

In the series Drawing without paper, she challenged the idea that boundaries have a purely physical character by using shadows to create new variations on spatial distinctions. In that series, it was difficult to establish a universal idea regarding the title of the work: did it refer to the wire mesh or the shadow it cast upon the wall? The viewer, upon entering a room, observes, on the one hand, a closed structure.

On the other hand, he or she finds themselves in an immaterial interior, surrounded by shadows. Her works of drawing and weaving are reminiscent of the everyday work of local communities, in their form and process. Such objects, from baskets to fishing nets, stand as a counterweight to the cult of modernization. Gego arrived in Venezuela from Hamburg during an economic boom, and she was surrounded by a group of successful artists.

Modernism was the artistic fad sweeping through Latin America, and artists in Venezuela participated enthusiastically. Modernism was a political tool as well. Latin American governments were trying to catch up to the advancements of the United States during the Post World War II era, and Venezuela thought that by encouraging the modern art movement, which incorporated ideas of the industry, science, and architecture, the country would be seen as progressive.

Gego made her first sculpture in She wanted to create a style of her own because she was able to use so many aspects of her life in her art—for example, her German heritage. Gego's series of artworks that would be titled "Drawings Without Paper" are reflections on her view of space. Gego not only used these materials to create lines in her massive sculptures but also in her series entitled Dibujos Sin Papel Drawings without Paper.

These small works were created from scraps of metal that were bent and weaved together in order to evoke movement, experimentation, and spontaneity. While in Los Angeles in the late s, Gego composed a series of lithographs that were mostly untitled except for a ten-page book entitled, Lines in This book was produced in gray and red.

Variations in the thickness, length, and direction of the lines demonstrate the fundamental instability of lines. By experimenting with line in a different medium, Gego emphasized that the notion of a "line" retains its strength and independence regardless of its specific location or form. Gego's idea of a series of artworks that would be titled "Drawings Without Paper" reflected on her view of space.

She considered space as its own form; as if her artwork was occupying the artwork of the room itself.

Gertrude goldschmidt picture biography gego

Since her work is made from nets and grid-like materials, negative space is everywhere, creating an appreciation of both the negative as well as the positive space. But it is the shadows created by her works that reveal the integral connection between the sculpture and the room it occupies. In Gego's work, she was thus allowed to play with the idea of the stable and unstable elements of art: [ 12 ] The stable elements of art is the sculpture itself, while the unstable elements consist of the constantly changing shadows and the slight movement in her design due to the fragility of her materials.

In fact, the way Gego's sculptures exist in space changes every time it was installed because she had the power to recreate the image as she wanted. On the invitation of June WayneGego briefly visited Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles now Tamarind Institute in and returned as an artist-fellow from November to Decemberduring which time she created thirty-one lithographs, including two books of them.

Gego explained her interest in using non-traditional formats in her printmaking in a speech at Tamarind in "I think that series of sheets with a coherent meaning must be gathered in a way that they can be easily enjoyed so I make books. As in her three-dimensional installations, Gego used printmaking as a mode of linear experimentation.

She used line, and its infinite variations, to explore negative space, or what she called, the "nothing between the lines. Her first series was created in Pieces of aluminum and steel were joined together to create an interweaving of nets and webs that fills the entire room when exhibited. Her use of repetition and layering in the massive structure causes the piece to seem endless.

In Gego met Venezuelan urban planner Ernst Gunz at the architectural firm where she worked with other architects to design the Los Caobos housing estate for Luis Roche. By she returned to designing private homes, nightclubs, and restaurants. In she separated from Gunz, and in met artist and graphic designer Gerd Leufert. She was educated at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, acquiring a degree in architecture in Her German citizenship was nullified in and to escape the increasing anti-Semitism in her home country, she emigrated to Caracas, Venezuela inwhere she worked as a freelance architect and industrial designer until the mids and becoming a citizen in Inshe moved to the coastal town of Tarma and began her artistic work, producing drawings, watercolors, monotypes and xylographs; the majority of these early works were figurative and expressionist.

Her first individual show was held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in ; in she installed a sculpture at the headquarters of the Banco Industrial de Venezuela.