Line and the space it implies define Gego’s work. After
receiving degrees in engineering and architecture at
the University of Stuttgart, Gego immigrated to Caracas
in 1939. Venezuela, amid the prosperity of the 1950s,
modernized its energy systems, infrastructure, and
architecture. To enhance these projects, the government
funded public art commissions by Venezuelan artists,
some of whom had studied in Europe, spurring the
growth of the geometric abstraction and kineticism
movements.
Although independent of these, Gego’s work
exemplified the visual risk and innovation characteristic
of Venezuelan art at mid-century. Her practice married
a language of structure with a sense of experimentation,
in works combining found materials typically pieced
together by hand. She also created drawings and prints
related to her sculpture series, beginning with the
room-sized Reticularea (1969), a delicate weblike net
of hand-knotted steel wires that surrounds the viewer.
In her subsequent Drawings without Paper series, each
sculpture hangs from the ceiling close to the wall, its
organic form composed of metal wires, strings, and
found detritus. The shadows cast by curling wires and
aluminum tubing echo the delicate movement of lines
drawn in space by the artist’s hand.
