ACTIVITIES

This book was presented under the auspices of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Fundación GEGO. It contains all the texts which have appeared during the over forty years since Gego’s work Reticulárea was created. Compiled by María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin under the editorship of MariCarmen Ramírez and Melina Kervandjian, this book unveils the great impact of Reticulárea on the most important spheres of international art. The book was presented in Houston, USA, in November 2013 and in Caracas in April 2014.

From a selection of graphic works in the collection of Fundación de Museos Nacionales and those in the custody of Fundación Gego, the public could enjoy the results of Gego’s work in prestigious workshops such as the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, California, as well as Gego’s contribution to the knowledge and execution of different techniques at the Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados (TAGA) in Caracas. It was also an opportunity to enjoy some of her drawings, inks and watercolors.

According to its curator, Constanza de Rogatis, the proposal of this exhibition “Gego sobre papel. El Trazo Transparente” “surges from the idea of finding out how the characteristics of the various techniques determined Gego’s approach to the work in her drawings and graphic works. Thus, the artist would develop groups of pieces in which the alternation of shapes, matter and color would unveil rich and surprising variants according to the characteristics of each medium, while being faithful to the search for transparence, a constant in the corpus of her work.

The International Association of Art Critics, Venezuelan chapter, endowed the exhibition Gego, Procedencia y Encuentro, organized by Fundación Gego and Sala Mendoza and curated by Josefina Manrique which took place between May and August 2012, with the prize AICA 2012 for best individual exhibition of small/medium format. The event took place on May 27th 2013.

In 2011 Fundación Gego decided to begin the process of cancellation of the original plates which were in our custody and which had not been cancelled in the artist’s lifetime. For this process we had the valuable counsel and participation of printing master Norma Morales from Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados TAGA. First the plates were cleaned and then a posthumous print of ten copies from eighteen plates was carried out. As a conclusion of this process, the cancellation of the original plates was started on April 10th, 2013 in a public ceremony. Minutes of the proceedings were taken and it was also filmed on a video by Argelia Bravo and produced by Fundación Gego.

This conference, organized by Americas Society and Columbia University as part of the activities surrounding the exhibition “ Gego. Origin and Encounter. Mastering the space” gathered a select group of art historians, academics and critics with the purpose of reflecting on the historic relevance of Gego’s oeuvre on her centennial. Mónica Amor, Nuit Banai, Barry Bergdoll, Bruno Bosteels, Sylvia Cedeño and Hannah Feldman, among others, participated in the symposium which took place on November 7th, 2012. It was introduced by Gabriela Rangel, Director of Visual Arts at Americas Society and chaired by Alexander Alberro, professor at Columbia University.