German-Venezuelan artist Gego is being celebrated in a major exhibition of her abstract geometric work in Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum.
Gertrud Luise Goldschmidt (1912-94) was born into a Hamburg Jewish family, studied in Stuttgart and fled the Nazis for Venezuela, where she became well-known for her kinetic sculptures.
Her works are sold for six-figure dollar sums, although exhibitions in museums are rare. An exhibition was held in Stuttgart in the spring of 2022, and in August the same year in Mexico's Jumex Museum.
New York's Guggenheim showed her work in March this year, and it is now to be seen in Bilbao until February 4, entitled "Gego: MeasuringInfinity."
Around 150 sculptures, drawings and prints are on display,illustrating her progress from early figurative landscapes to her spatial installations made of wire, cord and aluminium rods,
Reticuláreas, a series of repeated aluminium and steel sculptures created in 1969, forms the centre-point in Bilbao.
Her last works, small two-dimensional works in interwoven paper strips made in 1987-91, are also on display.
Gego experimented with space and line, translating her work into varied forms in graphics and three-dimensional moving sculptures.
A Paris gallery exhibited her aluminium and steel sculptures at the end of 2022. Her grandson, Elias Crespin, also an artist who lives in Paris, told dpa he hoped a comprehensive exhibition would be put on soon in France too. — dpa
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