Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In the following passages, Luis Felipe Noé reflects on the function and methods of art in the contemporary atomized society. He asserts that transformations of art imply a constant revolution. Today’s artists must examine and expose the [...]

In this text, Luis Miró Quesada Garland responds to the letter from critic and playwright Edgardo Pérez Luna published on November 7, 1954. To counter the opinion that abstract art has no “meaning,” Miró Quesada Garland cites Hegel, Schiller, [...]

The Venezuelan curator and critic Lourdes Blanco analyzes Reticulárea, 1969, the installation created by the German-born Venezuelan artist, Gego. Blanco sees this work as the product of a process of “calculation and spontaneity” that is utterly [...]

This article describes and analyzes the role of the “recipient” of the various messages expressed by the visual arts. At the end of the dictatorship period (1973–85), Uruguayan artists once again sought to come to grips with the question of [...]

The subject of the essay, “Todo final es un comienzo” [Every End is a Beginning], is the Reticuláreas by the Venezuelan artist originally from Germany, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994). The text emphasizes the developmental process of [...]

Curator María Elena Ramos reflects on the problem of “space” on the basis of works by Víctor Lucena in which space is manipulated in objects, geometric shapes, materials, colors, and textures. Ramos underscores the importance of perception ( [...]

The curator María Elena Ramos discusses the problem of space, both in architecture and in works of art that involve manipulating art and space; her frame of reference ranges from what is “visible and exists” (architecture, real space) to what is [...]

In his review of Luisa Richter’s paintings, Kurt Leonhard lists the criteria that might be used to rate a work of art, such as its originality, openness, innovative expression, and “energy for change.” Leonhard studies her work, paying [...]

This text describes the most outstanding characteristics of the works created by Gego during her involvement with the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles, California, in 1966. The article explains that Gego’s line, a predominant element in [...]

This document is the first edition (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, 1979) of the book, Variaciones sobre reticuláreas, [Variations on Reticuláreas], a poem by Alfredo Silva Estrada. Silva Estrada wrote the poem as an homage to Gego on the [...]

This essay on Gego’s work, Reticulárea (1969) by Gabriela Rangel was published in 2006 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the visual arts program at the Americas Society (New York). This is the institution previously known as the Center for Inter [...]

Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas analyzes Gego’s work in light of what he considers her contribution to the history of visual art. The critic considers [the source of] that contribution to be the different artistic milieu in which her artistic life [...]

Yasmín Monsalve interviews Gego and discusses the artist’s latest project, the series known as Tejeduras [Weavings]. Monsalve mentions certain facets of Gego’s life—such as her arrival in Venezuela and her architectural- [...]

In this article, Yasmín Monsalve reports on Gego’s presence at the Twenty-third São Paulo Biennial in 1996, and on her exhibition Gego. Dibujos. Dibujos, grabados y tejeduras [Gego Drawings: Drawings, Prints, and Weavings] presented that same [...]

In this essay titled, “Un año para celebrar a Gego” [A Year in Which to Celebrate Gego], the journalist Carmen Victoria Méndez from the newspaper El Nacional (Caracas) reviews the main cultural events on the 2012 calendar in [...]

In her weekly newspaper column, “Criticandito,” published on June 17, 1979 (in La Verdad, Caracas), Sofía Imber discusses four cultural events, two of which were at the Galería Mendoza, in Caracas: Guaches de la aldea de la India Madhubani [ [...]

Professor Víctor Guédez, who specializes in aesthetics, philosophy, and ethics, analyzes Gego’s work based on the elements which, in his opinion, create her “alphabet” (the dot, the line, and the void) and her lexicon [...]

Andreína Gómez interviews Elízabeth Gunz on the occasion of Gego. Dibujos. Dibujos, grabados y tejeduras [Gego Drawings: Drawings, Prints, and Weavings] the exhibition presented at the Centro Cultural Consolidado (Caracas, 1996 [...]

In this newspaper article, F. Gil Tovar describes Gego’s work as being representative of one of the two types of German art. In the critic’s view, Gego’s work is driven as much by concept as by logic (as opposed to Romanticism, the [...]

In this manuscript, Gego explains what she would say if people asked her about the influences on her work, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. She states that so far she would rather leave the responses to “historians and scholars.” She [...]

This document is a typewritten letter from Gego to Delpre C.A., Unidad Comercial La Florida, Caracas, dated June 10, 1972; it is addressed specifically to the architecture firm Siso, Shaw and Associates. In the letter, Gego informs the architects [...]

In this interview with Gego by Venezuelan journalist A. Feltra, certain aspects of the artist’s life and personality are discussed. Gego says that she does not like to expose her private life to the public, and asserts that her work speaks for [...]

This brief text was published in the first edition of the book Beyond Craft: The Art of Fabric (1973), written by two experts in textile art, weaving technique, and design: American curator Mildred Constantine, and American textile businessman and [...]

This text was written by Venezuelan playwright and essayist Isaac Chocrón (1930–2011) for the catalogue accompanying the Gego exhibition, Gego esculturas. 1957–1967, held at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá (1967). Chocrón places [...]

In this essay, Alejandro Salas studies Gego’s piece Reticulárea (1969). Salas describes and comments on the artist’s thoughts on the different ways she has assembled this work, as well as its journey through the different spaces where it has [...]

In this essay, Colombian critic and journalist Álvaro Burgos analyzes the sculptures by Gego, a Venezuelan artist of German origin, included in the exhibition Gego: Esculturas, 195­7–1967, held in Colombia. Burgos asserts that Gego’s works form [...]

Eliseo Sierra analyzes the sources and characteristics of Gego’s graphic discourse (drawings, prints, watercolors, and weavings). Sierra finds that the artist’s work resists classification and is substantially different from the masterworks of [...]

In the second part of this essay, Elsa Flores concludes her critical analysis of the work of visual artist Miguel von Dangel featured in the São Paulo Biennial. Flores examines the underlying premise that the combination of elements in von Dangel’ [...]

In this newspaper article, Antonio Velluto describes the incident at the Caracas Cathedral when the parish priest, Augusto Laborem, took a stick to the sculpture Retrato espiritual de un tiempo, by Miguel von Dangel, and destroyed it because he [...]

The critic Víctor Guédez reviews the work of Régulo Pérez and compares the formal changes and innovations he sees in this Venezuelan visual artist’s work with his earlier material. Guédez stresses the consistency of the artist’s message, [...]

In the first part of her review of La Batalla de San Romano—the German-born Venezuelan visual artist Miguel von Dangel’s version of Paolo Uccello’s Renaissance painting by the same name— María Luz Cárdenas analyzes similarities between the [...]

This interview with Miguel von Dangel, conducted by journalist María Josefa Pérez, covers his aesthetics, his most recent work, and how he thinks he is perceived by critics and the public. Responding to critics who describe his work as ugly and [...]

In this essay, Iris Peruga analyzes most of the work created by Gego between 1955 and 1990. The curator examines the similarities between Gego’s artwork and that of her contemporaries. Examining the artist’s relationship with the trends of [...]

In this essay, Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas studies Gego’s work, Reticulárea (1969) as Venezuela’s first real incursion into contemporary art. The critic contrasts the premises maintained by Venezuelan Syntheticism (which claims to be the last [...]

This is a letter written by the American entrepreneur and patron, David Rockefeller, to David Bronheim, president of the Center for Inter-American Relations, New York, on January 26, 1970. The letter thanked Bronheim for the good time he had on the [...]

The German curator, writer, and art historian, Dr. Dietrich Mahlow wrote a study of the spaces created by the [installation] of Reticulárea, created by the Venezuelan visual artist originally from Germany, Gego [Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994]. [...]

In this essay, Mónica Amor analyzes the contribution that the work by Gego, Reticulárea, has made to contemporary art. She claims that Reticulárea is a radical attack on the way architecture defines space, as well as the conventions of sculpture, [...]

Roberto Guevara’s review of Gego’s Reticulárea (1969) was written a year after the work was created and originally installed. Guevara calls it the most complete installation in Venezuelan visual art up to that point (1970) because the open [...]

This document is a letter written to Gego in German by the architect, Christian Thiel, from Frankfurt on October 15, 1982. After a short introduction, Thiel talks about his nostalgia for Reticulárea, installed in the Alte Oper [Old Opera Building], [...]

According to English critic and curator Guy Brett, abstract works of art, whether systematic or informal in nature, can be seen as models of the universe. It is on this premise that he studies Gego’s work. Brett maintains that the work of many [...]

Art historian Hanna Feldman takes issue with critics who approach Gego’s art from a nationalist (Venezuelan) perspective, which she believes limits its scope and social importance. Feldman asserts that contemporary experiences of migration, exile, [...]

In this essay, Bruno Bosteels, a Belgian professor of Romance languages and literature, analyzes Gego’s art, focusing particularly on her environmental work, Reticulárea (1969). Bosteels grounds his analysis on the work of scholars from a number [...]

French critic and art historian Yve-Alain Bois bases his analysis of Gego’s work, particularly Reticulárea (1969), on poetic texts from ancient Greece, as well as the philosophy of Lucretiusand of Karl Marx. In his analysis, Bois, who taught in [...]

In this essay, English critic and curator Guy Brett examines precisely what elements are responsible for making Gego’s creations works of art rather than works of design or visual investigation, both ideas that are closely bound to her work. Brett [...]

This document shows a fragment of the score, Music of Changes, by the American composer John Cage, to be presented as an accompaniment to Gego’s environmental work, Reticulárea, in the exhibition Spielraum-Raumspiele [Play Room/Play Space] at the [...]

A short poem by the humorist Jesús Rosas Marcano published in his column “En Parihuelas,” in the newspaper El Nacional, is signed with the pseudonym “Hisopo” [Swab], and dedicated to Gego. The rhyming poem starts with the line: “Qué [...]

Venezuelan journalist Lenelina Delgado reports on an exhibition of watercolors by Gego that will be held at the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in Caracas. Delgado provides an overview of Gego’s career, describing her as the most coherent artist [...]

This review, dated March 29, 1981, is based on a visit made by some journalists from the “Caracas a Diario” supplement to the newspaper Diario de Caracas to Gego, and to view her work in gallery four of the Galería de Arte Nacional (GAN) in [...]

This draft of a text by painter Antonino Espinosa Saldaña was for a presentation at an exhibition of his work that did not take place. In it he justifies the absence of titles or any references for the works, “because one should not impose a [...]

According to Luis Zevallos Hetzel, the painting that took the prize at the Festivales Ancón is not exactly a work of art because it is an (exact) reproduction of an advertisement for a brand of motorcycles. Though the painter claims he is under no [...]