A major retrospective devoted to the work of Gego, or Gertrud Goldschmidt (b. 1912, Hamburg; d. 1994, Caracas), will be presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from March 31, 2023, through September 10, 2023, offering a fully integrated view of the influential German-Venezuelan artist and her distinctive approach to the language of abstraction. Across five ramps of the museum’s rotunda, Gego: Measuring Infinity will feature approximately 200 artworks from the early 1950s through the early 1990s, including sculptures, drawings, prints, textiles, and artist’s books.
Gego first trained as an architect and engineer at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart (now Universität Stuttgart). Fleeing Nazi persecution in 1939, she immigrated to Venezuela, where in the 1940s she embarked on an artistic career that would span more than four decades. In two- and three-dimensional works across a variety of mediums, she explored the relationship between line, space, and volume. Her pursuits in the related fields of architecture, design, public art, and pedagogy complemented those investigations.
Although Gego was arguably one of the most significant artists to emerge in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century, her work remains lesser known in the United States. Examining the formal and conceptual contributions she made through her organic forms, linear structures, and systematic spatial investigations, Gego: Measuring Infinity will ground her practice in the artistic contexts of Latin America that flourished over the course of her lengthy career.
It will consider Gego’s intersections with—and departures from—key transnational art movements including geometric abstraction, Kinetic art, Minimalism, and Post-Minimalism, tracing a markedly individual artistic path. This exhibition builds upon the Guggenheim Museum’s distinguished legacy of presenting groundbreaking modern and contemporary solo survey exhibitions that champion nonobjective art. A selection of this retrospective will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in the fall of 2023.
The museum is thankful for the tremendous support from and the close collaboration with the Fundación Gego. Gego’s children, Tomás and Barbara Gunz, Directors of the Fundación Gego, fully endorsed the exhibition and the foundation’s staff and board generously provided unrestricted access to its collection and archives.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s presentation of Gego: Measuring Infinity is organized by Pablo León de la Barra, Curator at Large, Latin America, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York.
Gego: Measuring Infinity is organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; and Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand—MASP.
The exhibition was developed by Julieta González, Artistic Director, Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil; Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York; and Pablo León de la Barra, Curator at Large, Latin America, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, and former Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand—MASP; in collaboration with Tanya Barson, former Chief Curator, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; and Michael Wellen, Senior Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, London.
Funders ~ The Leadership Committee for Gego: Measuring Infinityis gratefully acknowledged for its generosity, with special thanks to Clarissa Alcock and Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Chairs, as well as Dominique Lévy and Brett Gorvy, Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky, Adriana Batan Rocca, Peter Bentley Brandt, Catherine Petitgas, Maria Belen Avellaneda-Kantt, Alice and Nahum Lainer, and Ana Julia Thomson de Zuloaga.
Museum, New York. Photo: David Heald ©Solomon R. Guggenheim FoundaTon, New York
Funding is also generously provided by the Kate Cassidy Foundation, the David Berg Foundation, the Diane and Bruce Halle Foundation, and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Significant support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding is provided by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Latin American Circle.
Below, a few pictures of the exhibition’s Penthouse B: Last Home and Studio. Gerd Leufert, Gego’s partner, took these black-and-white photographs between 1984 and 1990.
The images offer intimate glimpses into Gego’s everyday life at the couple’s last shared home and studio, Penthouse B, and surrounding views of Caracas.
Located in the Loma Verde condominium building, the apartment was part of the Altolar residential complex, in the Colinas de Bello Monte neighborhood, designed by Venezuelan architect Jimmy Alcock in 1965.
Leufert showed a selection of these photographs in an exhibition titled Penthouse B at Caracas’s Sala RG in 1990 and published them in book form that same year.
Grego: Measuring Infinity will be on view from March 31 through September 10, 2023 at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, NYC. The exhibition can be found on the Rotunda level 1 through 5 and High Gallery.