GEGO: Prints and Drawings 1963-1991

“Gego’s influence is undeniable, although often overlooked by historical surveys.”

Gego, Untitled,1963. Ink on paper, 12 x 17.8 inches.

GEGO: Prints and Drawings 1963-1991

Frederico Sève Gallery

Frederico Sève Gallery is pleased to present GEGO: Prints & Drawings 1963-1991, an exhibition featured 13 prints and drawings that were completed by the German born, Venezuelan artist, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912-1994), from 1963 to 1991, along with a book of lithographs dating back to 1966. The show was on display to the public from May 25 – July 7, 2011.

The prints, drawings, and book documented a history of Gego’s involvement with prominent printmaking workshops in North America including Iowa State University; Pratt Institute, New York; and Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles. GEGO: Prints & Drawings 1963-1991 shed light on how the artist’s graphic works bridge her early sculptures with her breakthrough “drawings without paper,” which reflects space as its own form.

Gego’s influence is undeniable, although often overlooked by historical surveys. She is noted for her use of line as the subject itself, which resonates throughout her entire oeuvre. In a 2006 catalogue essay for Between Transparency and the Invisible, exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, art curator and critic Robert Storr writes, “The novelty of her idea of drawing without paper cannot be overstated … while seeming at first glance to have removed only paper from the process of drawing, she also removed what in the context of gesturalism has been called the mind of the hand, thereby eliminating the gestural drawing’s implicit author and subject…the implications of which extend beyond sculpture per se into the realms of nature and science.”

In June 2002, Frederico Sève Gallery, then known as latincollector, became one of the first galleries to display Gego’s works in the United States, in an exhibition in conjunction with Gego Foundation. Prior to that time, Gego’s only other solo show in the city was in 1971. “I first became interested in Gego in 1999, while my wife and I had been spending a lot of time in Venezuela,” recalls Frederico Sève, founder of Frederico Sève Gallery. “I fell in love with the mystery of one of her ‘drawings without paper’ and instinctually felt that she was one of the most undervalued and underexposed Latin American artists at that time.”

Gego’s most recent solo exhibition in New York City was displayed in 2007 at The Drawing Center. Of that show, The New York Times writer Holland Cotter reviewed, “I first encountered her a decade ago in the eye-opening survey ‘Re-Aligning Vision: Alternative Currents in South American Drawing’… Even in that competitively eclectic show, her netlike, freehand ink drawings stood out. They were plain and complicated in ways nothing else was.”