An authoritative study of Gego, whose distinctive modernist practice sits at the intersection of architecture, design, and the visual arts
This important book is the first extended study of the life and work of German-born Venezuelan artist Gertrude Goldschmidt (1912–94), known as Gego. In locating the artist’s contribution to postwar art and her important place in the global conversations around modernity, Mónica Amor explores her intermedial practice as a model of cultural complexity at the “edge of modernity.” In situating Gego’s work alongside other local archives and against her European education and global reception, Amor offers a monographic model that complicates traditional approaches to history. She investigates the full range of Gego’s work, including her furniture workshop, her teaching at schools of architecture and design, her seminal reticuláreas, and her lesser-known prints. Through rigorous archival research, formal analysis, theoretical relevance, and deep exploration of historical context, this essential book unpacks Gego’s radical recasting of the modern sculptural project through her engagement with architecture, craft, and design pedagogy.
Mónica Amor is professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of Theories of the Nonobject: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, 1944–1969.
“In this dexterous analysis of Gego's practice, including her architectural training in Germany and her teaching at the schools of architecture and design in Venezuela, Amor unpacks the complexity of the cultural scenes and visual languages that informed the artist's work and thought.”—T’ai Smith, author of Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design
“Weaving together formal analysis, historical narrative, and critical reflection, Gego is a major contribution to the historiography of Venezuelan and Latin American art.”—Harper Montgomery, author of The Mobility of Modernism: Art and Criticism in 1920s Latin America
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