Acknowledgments

Amor, Mónica

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Acknowledgments

Mónica Amor

Gego: Weaving the Space in Between

I am pretty sure I was on a plane when I wrote the acknowledgments for my first book. It is the case, on this second occasion, maybe because the view from above metaphorically offers us, as historians, a better perspective, recollection, and insight into the diverse agencies that contribute to the long durée of research, writing, and publishing. I...

Author

Mónica Amor

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31665

Acknowledgments

I am pretty sure I was on a plane when I wrote the acknowledgments for my first book. It is the case, on this second occasion, maybe because the view from above metaphorically offers us, as historians, a better perspective, recollection, and insight into the diverse agencies that contribute to the long durée of research, writing, and publishing. I have worked and thought about Gego for most of my professional life, and that makes the task of thanking those who made this book possible more difficult than usual. I do know exactly where to start. Venezuelan critic and curator Rigel Garcia became a research partner in 2018 when a sabbatical allowed me to devote the academic year to develop a research plan in accord with the kind of monograph that I wanted to write. I knew then that my goal was to situate the Gego archive in relation to other local archives and that the daunting task of collecting sources in a country whose libraries, institutions, foundations, and collections face disregard or inconstancy would be incredibly challenging. There is no doubt that Rigel’s utter dedication to the project and unmatched professionalism were instrumental in allowing me to access over time, and as the book was taking shape, an enormous amount of material, some of which she also helped me organize and process. I am forever grateful for her work and support during dire times, especially as the preparation of the manuscript was coming to an end. In addition, Rigel helped me with the titanic task of collecting images and contacting copyright holders. I simply could not have done this book without her.

When I began to work on Gego in the mid-nineties, the Fundación Gego was in its early stages and dealing with the artist’s papers and works was a family affair that involved conversations with her daughter, Barbara Gunz; her son, Tomas Gunz; her grandchildren, Elias and Esther Crespin; and long hours in the office and numerous discoveries and questions. I have the fondest memories of summer trips to Caracas, my hometown, and visits to the contiguous offices where Gego storaged her work that became the headquarters of the Fundación. The latter has been transformed into an extremely professional space dedicated to keeping her oeuvre alive and the archive carefully guarded. I am grateful to Josefina Manrique, curator of the foundation, and Claudia Garcés, invaluable documentalist, for keeping things familial and patiently supporting my research and ongoing requests. The foundation’s staff and Priscilla Abecasis, its director, have sustained my adventurous discovery of Gego’s life and work. The latter has, in turn, become very much central to my life and work.

Expanded local research meant encountering many voices from my youth, when I was introduced to the then thriving art world and art history of my country. I am especially thankful to Tahia Rivero, who continues to be a steadfast advocate and a dear friend. To Jesús Fuenmayor, who first asked me to write about Gego in 1995. To designer Álvaro Sotillo for sharing his profound knowledge of Gego and her partner Gerd Leufert. To Sylvia Cedeño, whose intimate knowledge of the materiality of the Reticulárea and the artist’s methods expanded my understanding of the work. And to Katherine Chacon, Gabriela Rangel, Henrique Faria, Enrique Larrañaga, Hannia Gómez, Jorge Rivas, Leonel Vera, George Dunia, Leyla Dunia, Ruth Auerbach, Paulina Villanueva, Mercedes Otero, and Gabriela Fontanillas, for sharing their expertise and passion for the material addressed here. I am truly thankful for their generosity and friendship.

Beyond this wonderful network of support and affection, there were many other gestures that allowed me to advance the research, writing, and preparation of the manuscript: from Vasco Szinetar, Sagrario Berti, Vicente Lecuna, Moisés Chávez Herrera, Santiago Mendoza, Oscar Tenreiro, Cecilia Castrillo, Abraham Tovar, Pía Rodríguez, and Juan Pérez Hernández in Caracas. From Brenda Danilowitz at The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, from Amy Baker, the late Mireya Escalante, and my colleagues T. J. Demos, Janet Kraynak, Daniel Quiles, T’ai Smith, Larry Busbea, Noit Banai, Amze Emmons, Ben Kinmont, Matthew Jarron, and Philip Ording, all of whom answered questions or supported my research in other ways. From Mari Carmen Ramírez, who facilitated the sustained viewing of Gego’s work on paper at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and from her colleagues Marty Stein and Shelby Rodriguez, who patiently complied with all my image requests. From Babette Radtke at the Helene Lange Lyceum for photographing Gego’s file card; Anja Kraemer, director of the Weissenhofmuseum, for a magnificent tour of the Weissenhof site; Nathalie David for a wonderful collage of images from her film on Gego; and Courtney Ay for heroically coming to my rescue to help me prepare images for publication.

While writing the manuscript, various colleagues encouraged my ongoing research by commissioning talks or texts on the material addressed in the book. Thanks to Irene Small, Lisa LeFeuvre, Pablo León de la Barra, Inés Katzenstein, Maria Amalia García, Leah Dickerman, Franco Micucci, Jesús Fuenmayor, and Stefanie Reisinger for letting me test my ideas in public, and for a public. A special thank-you to curator Carlos Basualdo, my husband, who not only has supported my work professionally but with unending enthusiasm—the impact of our life-long dialogue is present in every page. Thanks also to my kids Lucas and Maya Basualdo, whose love and presence, as well as interruptions, ground my work in the wondrousness of the everyday.

Research and writing for this book was supported by many generous grants and fellowships: from The Andy Warhol Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Henry Moore Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the Program in Latin American Studies at Princeton University, and a Marcella Brenner Grant for Faculty Development and Research from the Maryland Institute College of Art. I am deeply thankful for these awards and to the people behind them for providing time and resources to pursue my work.

Katherine Boller, my editor at Yale University Press, expressed interest in publishing the book before it was written. She pressed to move expediently through the peer-review process and found wonderful readers to whom I am thankful for productive feedback. Also, at Yale, thanks to Raychel Rapazza for her guidance in submitting the manuscript. Mary Cason has edited many of my past texts and was in charge of copy editing this very long manuscript. It was intense labor for which I am grateful.

Production and copy editing were possible thanks to generous awards from the Coppel collection and the Graham Foundation, and a Millard Meiss Publication Fund of the College Art Association. I am immensely thankful to Agustin and Isabel Coppel for helping Yale University Press to deliver a handsome book and for buttressing my work once again. Sicardi/Ayers/Bacino Gallery in Houston helped me defray the cost of photographing some of Gego’s work on paper. I am thankful for their support. Julie Allred and her team at BW&A Books are responsible for the production and design of the book. Thanks to them and designer Jeff Wincapaw whose exquisite cover is a dream come true.

Thanks to the artists, foundations, and collections who waived reproduction fees for the gorgeous images that appear in these pages: Fundación Gego, Fundación Otero Pardo, Fundación Villanueva, Archivo Fotografia Urbana, Archivo Jacobo Borges, Projeto Lygia Pape, Archivo Sara Guardia de Mendoza, Archivo Olga de Amaral, Atelier Jesús Soto, Atelier Cruz-Diez, Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Estate of László Moholy-Nagy, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Americas Society Archive, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Blum & Poe Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Getty Museum, Consejo de Preservación y Desarrollo-COPRED-UCV, Colección Mercantil, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Gabriela Fontanillas, Álvaro Sotillo, Leonel Vera, Françoise Grossen, Sheila Hicks, and Gerhardt Knodel.

I am finishing these lines on my way back from Germany. I finally visited Hamburg, where I went to see Gego’s house and strolled around her neighborhood, imagining what her life must have been back then. I took in the peaceful view of the lake and the lovely canal that runs through the back of the house, where Gego claims to have thrown the keys of her home and her German life before leaving for Venezuela. I sneaked into her elementary school, where I confirmed that she arrived at the age of six, in 1918, to join the ranks of the first (publicly) educated girls in the city of Hamburg. I then continued to Stuttgart to participate in a conference on Gego on the occasion of a new exhibition (Gego: The Architecture of an Artist) that has filled a lacuna concerning her professional training in that city. This capped a string of exhibitions and publications launched by the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas in 2000 that were forcefully advanced by a number of initiatives produced under the helm of Mari Carmen Ramírez at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Gego Foundation: Questioning the Line: Gego, A Selection, 1955-90 (2003); Gego: Between Transparency and the Invisible (2005); Sabiduras and Other Texts by Gego (2005); Untangling the Web: Gego’s Reticulárea (2014). In 2006 Gego, 1957-1988: Thinking the Line curated by Nadja Rottner and Peter Weibel at ZKM Karlsruhe; Gego Architecto at Sala TAC in Caracas; and my own Gego: Defying Structures at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Porto followed. Gego: Origin and Encounter; Mastering the Space at the Americas Society in New York, curated by Gabriela Rangel and Josefina Manrique, took place in 2012, and the following year Gego: Line as Object, organized by museums in Leeds, Stuttgart, and Hamburg, marked Gego’s grand return to Europe and her hometown. The spring of 2023 will see Gego: Measuring Infinity arriving at the Guggenheim Museum in New York after stops in São Paulo and Mexico City. I am thankful for all this enriching activity happening around Gego and for the opportunity to participate in this dialogue throughout the years. The essays written in these publications have amplified our understanding of a key artist of the twentieth century, whose work poses fundamental questions concerning making, artistic form and materiality, the imbrications between subjectivity and aesthetic practice, and culture at the edge of modernity. I hope this book contributes to answer and expand these questions and opens venues for future research and thinking.

Mónica Amor

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