Gego: Measuring Infinity

Gego, or Gertrud Goldschmidt (b. 1912, Hamburg; d. 1994, Caracas), 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, Gego explored the relationship between line, space, and volume. Her practice in the related fields of architecture, design, and pedagogy complemented those investigations. This exhibition will be the first major museum retrospective of Gego’s work to be presented in the United States since 2005, 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 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda, the chronological and thematic survey will feature approximately 200 pieces from the early 1950s through the early 1990s, including sculptures, drawings, prints, textiles, and artist’s books.​​

Gego is arguably one of the most significant artists to emerge in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century, yet 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 in a global context that champion nonobjective art.

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.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website