This article by the Venezuelan art critic and journalist Roberto Montero Castro (1945–2005) about Reticulárea (1969)—the signature work by the German-born Venezuelan artist, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994)—is one of the first critical reviews of the work, written at the same time as the one by Roberto Guevara. Though brief and somewhat elementary, even for a newspaper review, these two articles share the distinction of having been the first to address the complexity of the work, which was innovative and unprecedented in the history of Venezuelan modern art. These reviews laid the foundation for the critical language that has subsequently been used to study and appraise this work. In Montero Castro’s essay, for example, his perception of the work as “open” and an “experience,” and his description of its “enveloping” nature would all be thoroughly explored in later critical essays. He would address the Reticulárea once again in 1977.
This document is among those chosen for the bilingual book Desenredando la red. La Reticulárea de Gego. Una antología de respuestas críticas / Untangling the Web: Gego’s Reticulárea, An Anthology of Critical Response, María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin (organizers)—to be published by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Fundación Gego, Caracas.