Gego

LGDR is pleased to present Lines in Space, the first exhibition of Gego’s work at the gallery’s new flagship location. A leading figure of Venezuelan abstraction in the 1960s and ’70s, Gego (1912–1994) created multidimensional works that radically engage the properties of line and space. Lines in Space will offer a concentrated survey of the artist’s works across media, including the constellated wire structure Chorro (1979/86), the six-part steel-and-bronze sculpture Cornisa I (1967), the rectilinear Meccano (1985), and a diverse array of luminous watercolors, collages, and drawings. We are delighted to present our exhibition in collaboration with Fundación Gego and to mount our presentation alongside the New York iteration of Gego: Measuring Infinity, a major traveling retrospective of the artist’s work on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (March 31–September 10, 2023).

Best known for her net-like wire structures, Gego rejected stylistic categories and historical trajectories of influence, wedding the intuition of expressionism and the order of the constructivist grid. Her approach to geometric abstraction is defined by her calligraphic hand as well as her training in architecture and engineering. Working between artistic disciplines, Gego challenged the grid as an idealized form so often employed in modernized urban space. Indeterminacy was something she welcomed in the reception and production of her works. In 1981, she wrote: “What is stimulating is activity, the development of which is impossible to know beforehand.”

Spanning a period from 1961 through 1990, Lines in Space begins with works on paper that explore the possibilities of line to disrupt or diffuse ordered composition. On view will be key examples of the artist’s sculptural series, such as Chorro (1979/86). Initiated as a Chorro (Stream) work in 1979, the sculpture was reworked by the artist in 1986, attaining the net-like qualities of Reticulàrea, Gego’s most impactful series. The work is one of approximately 15 large-scale, stand-alone wire sculptures by the celebrated artist.

The three-dimensional works in the exhibition have the effect of immaterial volumes, constructed by shadow as much as solid form. Across her work, Gego dissolved structural boundaries to activate marginal and interstitial space. Meccano (1985) derives from her series Dibujos sin papel (Drawings without Paper) that build on the avant-garde tradition of drawing in space. The latest works on view belong to the artist’s final series, Tejeduras (Weavings) (1988–91), which comprise found paper woven to recall the textile craft Gego learned in her childhood in Hamburg, Germany.

Lines in Space travels from LGDR’s Paris gallery at 4 Passage Ste Avoye where it was the first exhibition dedicated to the work of Gego in Paris. This presentation follows those organized by Lévy Gorvy in New York (2015) and London (2016), and continues a long-standing relationship with the artist’s estate. The retrospective Gego: Measuring Infinity traveled from Museo Jumex in Mexico City (October 2022– February 2023), and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2019–20), and will continue on to the Guggenheim Bilbao (October 2023–February 2024). On May 13, 2023, LGDR will host a book launch to celebrate the new authoritative monograph on the artist by Mónica Amor, Gego: Weaving the Space in Between, published by Yale University Press.

Born Gertrud Goldschmidt in Hamburg, Germany, Gego studied engineering and architecture at the Technical School of Stuttgart (1938). In 1939, she fled Nazi Germany and immigrated to Caracas, Venezuela. A contemporary of Kinetic artists Jesús Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero, she arrived at her art practice when she was 41. Traveling exhibitions and retrospectives dedicated to the artist have been organized by such institutions as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2022–23); Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas (2000); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2005); Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto (2006); Hamburger Kunsthalle (2013); the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2014); and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2022). In 2005, Gego’s writings (Sabiduras) were published for the first time. Her work belongs to the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; and the Tate, London, among many others.