Untangling the Web

Gego (1912–1994) pioneered a new direction in art with her innovative sculptures of the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Germany as Gertrud Goldschmidt, she fled the Nazi regime and moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where she absorbed modernist trends but ultimately forged her own artistic path. Exploring the concept of the line, space, and time, she linked pieces of metal to create weblike geometric forms, which she called "drawings in space." These experiments culminated in Reticularea, a massive netlike sculptural installation first presented at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, in 1969. This groundbreaking work had major repercussions in the art world and marked a turning point in Gego's career. Centered on the various iterations of this work and its artistic impact, this anthology—published on the one-hundredth anniversary of Gego's birth—brings together images as well as documentary materials and primary texts in English and Spanish by artists, writers, and Gego.