Gego & Gerd for Leubsdorf Gallery by Hunter College Art Galleries

GEGO GERD

GEGO AND GERD LEUFERT: A DIALOGUE

GEGO GERD

The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery Hunter College Art Galleries October 3–November 22, 2014

GEGO AND GERD LEUFERT: A DIALOGUE

Curated by Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães Organized by Sarah Watson and Annie Wischmeyer www.gegoandgerd.org

Table of Contents

Foreword 7

Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães

8–17

Biographies of Artists Sophia Marisa N. Lucas

18–21

Notes 22

Acknowledgments 23

Foreword On behalf of the Hunter College Art Galleries, we are pleased to present “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” in the newly renovated Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery. We are proud to welcome you to this intrepid show, guest curated by Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, a Hunter College art history alumna, who has continued her involvement in the arts at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. We are exceeding grateful to President Jennifer J. Raab for her ceaseless support in programming Latin American art at Hunter College. This thrilling exhibition offers a rare opportunity to showcase the works of Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt, Venezuelan, born Hamburg, Germany, 1912–1994) and Gerd Leufert (1914–1998, Venezuelan, born Memel, Lithuania), two artists who were partners in life and shared a parallel dialogue in their creative visions. Not only does this pairing highlight the distinct artistic development and reciprocal influence between these two artists, but also reinforces Hunter College’s dedication to expanding its scholarship in Latin American art and art history, and deepening student, faculty, and community engagement. Such a show provides a stimulating space for students to interact with the works of Gego and Gerd Leufert; they might even form their own dialogues concerning the crucial interplay between these two artists who helped shape Latin American modern art. “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” has been made possible by our generous supporters, old and new alike. Hunter College is immensely grateful to Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, the ISLAA (Institute for Studies on Latin American Art), the GPM Fund, Solita Mishaan, Andrea and José Olympio Pereira, and the Sicardi Gallery, Houston. Generous ongoing support for the Hunter College Art Galleries from Carol Goldberg, Agnes Gund, and an anonymous donor has been transformative in the creation of this unique exhibition. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue,” as it heralds a bright future for Hunter College’s persistent interest, research, and endeavors in investigating the rich landscape of Latin American art. — JOACHIM PISSARRO Bershad Professor of Art History, Hunter College, The City University of New York Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries

Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue

Fig. 1: Gerd Leufert, Listonado (Ventana) (Strip [Window]), 1972. Acrylic on wood, 35 7/16 x 31 1/2 x 3 1/8 in. (90 x 80 x 8 cm). Colecciรณn Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and Caracas Fig. 2: Gego, Dibujo sin papel 79/14 (Drawing without paper 79/14), 1979. Metal and wire, 17 1/4 x 17 3/4 in. (43.8 x 45.1 cm). Private collection, courtesy of Henrique Faria, New York

Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt, Venezuelan, born Germany, 1912–1994) and Gerd Leufert (Venezuelan, born Lithuania, 1914–1998) are among the most significant artists working with the language of abstraction during the second half of the twentieth century in Venezuela. The exhibition “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” highlights both artists’ development and reciprocal influence through a focused core of works produced from 1964 to 1990. This show, consisting mainly of works on paper and sculpture, explores shared motifs in each of these artists’ productions, most notably their use of the line as a means of enhancing the visual potentiality of empty spaces within two or three-dimensional forms. “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” provides a long-overdue, tandem examination of the artists’ works, thereby unveiling an underlying, parallel dialogue of nonobjective language within their organic forms, linear structures, and systematic, spatial investigations. Both Gego and Leufert received in-depth academic training that served as a major foundation for their artistic development. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1912, Gego graduated with a degree in engineering and a minor in architecture from the Technische Hochschule (Technical School) of Stuttgart in 1938, where she studied under the influential German architect Paul Bonatz (1877–1956).1 She fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and migrated to Venezuela, where she met Leufert in 1951.2 Once in Caracas, Gego worked as an architect and furniture designer. By the early 1950s she abandoned architecture, pursuing her artwork more seriously instead. A major figure in postwar art, Gego’s ongoing study and research of linear knots, parallel lines, and the effects of parallax—in which the direction and the shape of a static object changes due to the movement of the viewer’s physical position—became more explicit in her groundbreaking wire sculptures and environmental installations created from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. Gerd Leufert was born in Memel, Germany (present-day Klapėida, Lithuania), and graduated from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), Munich, in 1939, an institution where he received rigorous academic training in graphic arts under the renowned German graphic designer Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke (1878–1965).3 Before migrating to Venezuela in 1951, Leufert worked as a graphic designer in several important German publishing houses such as Piper, Biederstein, Oldenbourg, and Hanser.4 Leufert was already a well-established graphic designer upon his arrival to Caracas and held subsequent prestigious positions, including

Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue

director of arts at the international publishing house McCann Erickson (1952–53); artistic director of the magazine El Farol (1957), where he established experimental graphic design in typography and cover illustration; educator and docent at the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad Central de Venezuela (Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Central University of Venezuela) and at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Aplicadas (School of Visual and Applied Arts, 1958–60); and curator and museographer at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas (Museum of Fine Arts, 1961–73). Leufert became an unequivocal pioneer in graphic design, greatly enriching the fields of printmaking, draftsmanship, and exhibition design in Venezuela. Much like the serpentine, undulating, cursive lines so prevalent in their abstract works, Gego’s and Leufert’s artistic paths intersected several times throughout their lives. After migrating to Venezuela, they worked alongside their contemporaries, among them Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuelan, born 1923), Alejandro Otero (Venezuelan, 1921–1990), Jesús Rafael Soto (Venezuelan, 1923–2005), Nedo M. F. (Nedo Mion Ferrario, Venezuelan, born Italy, 1926–2001), Marcel Floris (Venezuelan, born France, 1914–2007), and Omar Rafael Carreño (Venezuelan, 1928–2013), all of whom were proponents of Geometric Abstraction and Kinetic Art that thrived from the 1950s to the 1970s. These movements offered Gego and Leufert fundamental tools for their own repertoire, such as how to create parallactic perception through the use of light, space, structure, form, and movement. Both artists participated in a group show at the Wolfgang Gurlitt Gallery in Munich (1955) and, in Caracas, they were founding members and professors of the Instituto de Diseño, Fundación Neumann—INCE (Institute of Design, Neumann Foundation—INCE), where they both taught from 1964 to 1967. (Gego would continue teaching there until 1977.) They traveled internationally to attend printmaking workshops at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and the Pratt Institute, New York (1959–60), and they taught fine arts at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Central University of Venezuela), Caracas, from 1958 to 1960. (Gego would continue teaching architecture courses through 1967.) By the late 1960s, Gego and Leufert had collaborated on two large-scale public space projects that integrated sculpture into architectural settings: Torre y Mural “Cediaz” (Tower and Mural “Cediaz,” 1967–68) and Fachada y Mural “Sede INCE” (Façade and Mural “INCE,” 1968–69). During the 1970s, when both Gego and Leufert were already well established within

Fig. 3: Gego, Untitled, 1970. Ink on paper, 25 13/16 x 19 7/8 in. (65.5 x 50.4 cm). Collection of Diane and Bruce Halle, Phoenix, Arizona

Fig. 4: Gerd Leufert, Untitled from the series 1973-16, ca. 1973. Ink on ripped paper, 20 1/16 x 25 in. (51 x 63.5 cm). Colecciรณn Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and Caracas

Fig. 5: Gego, Untitled, 1970. Colored ink on paper, 25 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. (65.4 x 50.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in memory of Warren Lowry. © 2014 The Museum of Modern Art. Photograph: John Wronn

Fig. 6: Gerd Leufert, Untitled, 1973–80. Ink on paper, 25 x 20 1/16 in. (63.5 x 51 cm). Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and Caracas

their respective fields, they each delved into series that gave them the opportunity to develop their expansive artistic vocabulary. From 1970 to 1974, Leufert worked on his series Listonados (Strips) (Fig. 1),5 three-dimensional objects consisting of rightangle wooden strips painted with acrylic either mounted perpendicularly to the wall or hung from the ceiling. The geometry of the square is the primary representation, according to curator Ruth Auerbach, who describes Leufert’s Listonados as volumetric structures that “trap” the immediate space and propel the spectator to perceive a fixed framework through an active interaction.6 His Listonados essentially “encase nothingness,”7 or integrate space with the artwork, so that the “frame vibrates . . . and space becomes almost tangible.”8 Similarly, Gego’s series Dibujos sin papel (Drawings without paper) (Fig. 2), her most prolific artistic investigation from 1976 to 1988, consists of gridlike structures made of wire, scrap metal, nylon, and other recycled materials, which are connected alongside geometric planes. Installed in close proximity to the wall, these fragile sculptural arrangements cast shadows that slightly move as they interact with the environment of the exhibition space. To Gego, the construction and deconstruction of the grid was the ideal matrix for her research as it provided her with infinite possibilities to modulate space and activate notions of opacity, energy, and parallactic effects.9 The Listonados and Dibujos sin papel series showcase a crucial aesthetic solution employed by both artists: the activation of space through linear structures that echo a window, a frame, an opening, an empty area, or a void that become engaged or activated with the viewer’s movement, and by extension, with each work’s immediate environment. While Gego’s drawings from the early 1970s were a precursor to her later wire sculptures, they also provided her with the ability to study the composition of a line in relation to empty space on a flat plane. Both Gego and Leufert explored the use of line with a focus on minimal linear traces (Fig. 3) and fragmental marks (Fig. 4) that seem to go beyond the plane’s edge. Upon closer examination, one can see that Leufert has ripped into the paper itself in order to produce visible lines, thereby engaging the substrate medium in the act of drawing (one of his common practices). Gego’s investigation of the grid and the spatial system of modular lines comes alive in the form of reticular nets (Fig. 5), which echo Leufert’s labyrinthine geometric system of lines (Fig. 6). Beginning in the early 1980s, Leufert focused intently on drawing, allowing him to experiment with color, looser brushstrokes, expressive line, and the play of light and shadow. His Untitled drawing from 1980 (Fig. 7), for example, celebrates his graphic and gestural aesthetic, which is materialized through careful

Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue

design. While works such as this drawing represent the greatest departure from Leufert’s training in applied arts, he maintained his characteristic use of directionality to create multiple articulations on the picture plane. The effect is a seemingly endless pathway into the depth of a concentrated network or a representation of a linear organic cascade. This work coincides with Leufert’s experiments utilizing natural materials to create sculpture, which may have also affected color choices in his later work. During this period, Gego continued to work on her Dibujo sin papel series, focusing more intently on smaller-scale works made of nylon, galvanized mesh, or other industrial materials. In her Dibujo sin papel 87/13 from 1987 (Fig. 8), for example, she attaches a piece of nylon mesh with multiple hooks onto a circular structure made of steel and iron. At the very center she interweaves a spiral helix structure, causing irregular tension and undulations within the mesh itself and echoing Leufert’s gestural linear marks. In one of Leufert’s early drawings from 1964 titled Amor (Love) (Fig. 9), he drew a knot made up of a red and a black line that meet at the center of the paper, interconnect in a loop, and tether to two opposite hooks. The notion of this knotting system became more prevalent in his Serie Ganchos (Hooks series) drawings as they evolved to utilize a system of hooks or loops, at times penetrating the paper, but ultimately connecting with the drawn lines at certain joints in order to create the illusion of a web or a net (Fig. 10). Scholar and poet Luis Pérez-Oramas writes of a similar practice in Gego’s work: “[She] finished her works with a point that was no longer just a point, but also a beginning. Gego began and finished with knotting. The work [is] an interplay of echoes, of knotted silences,”10 (Fig. 11). It is significant that such glimpses into Gego’s and Leufert’s respective practices convey their reciprocal influence and art-making strategies. “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” touches upon the consistent presence of shared motifs throughout their artistic trajectories. The partnership between Gego and Leufert resulted in lifelong mutual support that concurrently nurtured their personal relationship and their independent careers as artists. Gego has said that Leufert taught her “to see and discover—things you don’t learn in engineering or architecture,”11 and has opined that there was a great amount of “constructive criticism” between the two of them.12 Both ultimately became pioneers in their field, having a long-lasting impact on future generations of artists at national and international levels. — GEANINNE GUTIÉRREZ-GUIMARÃES

Fig. 7: Gerd Leufert, Untitled, 1980. Ink on paper, 19 5/8 x 16 5/8 in. (49.8 x 42.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Latin American and Caribbean Fund. ÂŠ 2014 The Museum of Modern Art. Photograph: John Wronn

Fig. 8: Gego, Dibujo sin papel 87/13 (Drawing without paper 87/13), 1987. Nylon, steel, and iron, 15 3/4 x 15 x 3 in. (40 x 38 x 8 cm). Private collection, New York. Photo: FundaciĂłn Gego Archive

Fig. 9: Gerd Leufert, Amor (Love), 1964. Ink on paper, 11 x 11 in. (27.94 x 27.94 cm). Courtesy Henrique Faria Fine Art Gallery, New York

Fig. 10: Gerd Leufert, Serie Ganchos (Hooks series), ca. 1980. Ink on paper, 25 x 18 3/4 in. (63.5 x 48 cm). Courtesy Cecilia de Torres Gallery, LTD.

Fig. 11: Gego, Dibujo sin papel 7 (Drawing without paper 7), 1978. Steel and wire, 18.1 x 28.3 x 4.1 in. (46 x 72 x 10.5 cm). Courtesy private collection, Miami, Florida. Photo: MC Peuser Photography Services

Biographies of Artists Gego was born Gertrude Goldschmidt in Hamburg, Germany, in 1912, and migrated to Venezuela in 1939, fleeing Nazi Germany. Trained as an architect at the Technische Hochschule (Technical School) of Stuttgart, now the Universität Stuttgart, she began her career in Caracas working at several architectural firms. Gego had maintained her practice of painting and drawing, and in the early 1950s she abandoned work as an architect to pursue art. In 1954 she exhibited for the first time in Venezuela at the XV Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano (XV Annual Official Salon of Venezuelan Art) at the Museo de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts), Caracas, and earned her first solo show in 1958. In the following decade, she explored the relationship between line, space, and volume, following a nonobjective language. She continued developing her visual vocabulary, working in engraving and sculpture, fastidiously conducting investigations of spheres and cubes, all the while conveying a dynamism with her lines that set her apart from her peers. From 1963 to 1967 Gego focused on refining her printing technique by making grant-funded trips to print workshops at the Pratt Institute in New York and the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. In 1967 she was awarded a prize for her lithographs at the XXVIII Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano (XXVIII Official Annual Salon of Venezuelan Art). Gego’s work of the late 1960s and 1970s shows her experimentation with new materials and three-dimensional construction techniques. With their intrinsic animism, transparency of construction, and sensitivity to gravity, Gego’s Reticulárea (Reticula [Net] + Area, 1969), Chorros (Streams, 197071), and Dibujos sin Papel (Drawings without paper, 1976-88) encouraged intimate engagement with the spectator.6 Gego continued to exhibit widely and produced several additional public works. In 1977 her largest solo exhibition, “Gego,” opened at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Caracas. In 1979 she was awarded Venezuela’s Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (National Fine Arts Prize), and in 1981, her installation Reticulárea was permanently installed at the Galería de Arte Nacional (National Art Gallery), Caracas. She continued to experiment and produce, in the late 1980s, small sculptures called Bichitos (Little Bugs), paper strips interweaved with other found printed material in Tejeduras (Weavings), and prints on silk. Highly idiosyncratic, Gego’s oeuvre was and remains iconic among her contemporaries, proponents of Venezuelan kinetic art, such as Jesús Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero, and post-war Constructivists. Gego’s dexterity with various art forms produced a consistent expression of her ideas wherein differences in media were nearly dissolved to her subject matter. Gego passed away in 1994 and her family created the Fundación Gego in Caracas that very same year to help disseminate her legacy.

Gego, 1984. Photo: Isidro Núñez, Fundación Gego Archive

Gerd Leufert was born in 1914 in Memel, a coastal Lithuanian town which was later occupied by Germany. He attended the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich in 1939 where he studied graphic design, and became a member of the Werkbund, an interdisciplinary association founded on the social importance of design and craftsmanship. He worked for several German publishing houses, and upon migrating to Caracas, Venezuela, in 1951, continued to work as a designer. Leufert’s contribution to visual culture, graphic design, and museology is paramount in Venezuela. He was credited with bringing the rigor of German design principles to the country, and was well regarded for his work as an art and graphic design teacher in various Caracas educational institutions. His art practice was continuous and evolving: looser and more organic than his graphic art and displaying a dedication to the expressive potential of line, undergirded by a fine understanding of the communicative potential of articulated space.1 In 1954 he was the subject of several solo exhibitions in Caracas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, in which his monotypes and collages figured prominently.2 Over the next four decades Leufert participated in solo and group exhibitions in Germany, France, Holland, Colombia, and Mexico, among others. From 1961 to 1973, Leufert worked at the Museo de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts), Caracas, first as a designer, rebranding the museum’s visual identity, and later as the curator of drawings and graphic design. During his tenure he developed numerous exhibitions and published nearly three hundred exhibition catalogues, of which he personally designed two hundred.3 During this time he also published celebrated and award-winning books, including Visibilia (1966), Imposibilia (1968), Nenias (1970), and Sin Arco (1971), which featured his groundbreaking graphic design. Upon retirement, from 1974–79, Leufert was part of a group of four designers who developed La nueva estampilla Venezolana (The new Venezuelan stamp) series of postage stamps, which were exhibited in Venezuela and Prague, thenCzechoslovakia.4 Boundless in his invention, he then focused on creating sculpture in organic materials and on a new venture into photography. In 1990 he was awarded Venezuela’s Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (National Fine Arts Prize), followed by an exhibition of his photographs at Sala RG, Caracas, curated by Miguel Arroyo (Venezuelan, 1920–2004).5 In the last years of his life, Leufert continued to exhibit his drawings and photographs at Centro Cultural Consolidado (Consolidated Cultural Center), Caracas (1992), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Museum of Contemporary Art) de Maracay Mario Abreu (1992), and Museo de Bellas Artes (1994–95). He passed away in Caracas in 1998. — SOPHIA MARISA N. LUCAS

Gerd Leufert, ca. 1960. Photo: Courtesy Gerd Leufert Estate and Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York

Notes Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue 1 For more information on Paul Bonatz’s influence on Gego’s academic training, please see Gego: Line as Object (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013). 2 Gego first married Ernst Gunz in Caracas in 1940 and had two children, Tomás and Barbara Gunz Goldschmidt, who are now the directors of the Fundación Gego in Caracas. Gego and Gunz separated in 1951 and later divorced in 1953. 3 See C. Arthur Croyle, Hertwig: The Zelig of Design (Ames, Iowa: Culicidae Architectural Press, 2011) for the influence of Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke on education and graphic arts in German academia. 4 Miguel G. Arroyo C., ed. Gerd Leufert: Diseñador (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1976), p. 11. 5 The word listonado is an architectural term used to describe molding, ridges, bands, or wooden strips used to support certain structures. 6 Ruth Auerbach, Enmarcando a Gerd Leufert: Listonados; Homenaje al artista en su centenario (Caracas: Trasnocho Arte Contacto, 2014), p. 20. 7 Roberto Guevara, “Leufert: Marcos para el vacio,” El Nacional (Caracas), December 12, 1972. 8 Ray Ponte [Raquel Chonchol], “Five Unique Artists in One Exhibition,” Daily Journal (Caracas), April 7, 1973. 9 In 1969 Gego created her environmental installation Reticulárea (Reticula [Net] + Area), which was the foundation for many of her sculptural investigations and allowed her to study the serial, linear superposition and transformation of irregular lines over a deconstructed grid. For more critical information on this particular open work, see Mari Carmen Ramírez and Melina Kervandjian, eds., Untangling the Web: Gego’s Reticulárea; An Anthology of Critical Response / Desenredando la red: La Reticulárea de Gego; Antología de respuestas criticas (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2013). 10 Luis Pérez-Oramas, Gego: Anudamientos (Caracas: Sala Mendoza, 2004), p. 16. 11 Roberto Montero Castro, “Gego o la provocación para un mundo nuevo,” El Universal (Caracas), September 18, 1977, p. 17. 12 Ibid.

Biographies of Artists 1 Victoria de Stefano, “Introduction,” in La emblemática de Gerd Leufert: Selección realizada por Alvaro Sotillo (Caracas: Ediciones Galería de Arte Nacional, 1984), pp. 6–7. 2 Iris Peruga and Marco Rodríguez del Camino, eds., Espacios imaginarios y reales: Tintas de Gerd Leufert, exh. cat. (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes Caracas, 1994), p. 24. 3 Miguel G. Arroyo C., ed., Gerd Leufert: Diseñador (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1976), p. 14. 4 Francisco da Antonio et al., eds., Diccionario biográfico de las artes visuales en Venezuela (Caracas: Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional, 2005), vol. 2, pp. 689–93. 5 Peruga and Rodríguez del Camino, Espacios imaginarios y reales, p. 24. 6 Mari Carmen Ramírez, “Para leer Gego entre la línea / Reading Gego between the Line,” in Questioning the Line: Gego in Context, edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Theresa Papanikolas (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2003), pp. 17–39.

Acknowledgments The success of “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” is the result of the hard work of many dedicated individuals. Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab enthusiastically supported the exhibition from the very beginning, along with Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History and Director of the Hunter College Galleries; Harper Montgomery, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Distinguished Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art; and Howard Singerman, Phyllis and Joseph Caroff Professor of Fine Arts and Department Chair, Department of Art and Art History, Hunter College. I am deeply indebted to Sarah Watson, Acting Director and Curator, and Annie Wischmeyer, Assistant Curator, for their invaluable support and tremendous dedication to the show; Jocelyn Spaar, Assistant to the Director, for her incredible administrative assistance; and Hunter College graduate students Sophia Marisa N. Lucas and Leo Castaneda for their involvement in the exhibition. I am appreciative of Phi Nguyen, Hunter College Art Galleries Preparator, and his crew for their work on the installation of this exhibition. I am grateful to Elizabeth Ashley Fox for the beautifully designed brochure and accompanying graphic design for the exhibition, and to Tim Laun, who worked closely with Elizabeth on the graphic identity of the exhibition. I also thank Amelia Kutschbach for her keen editing. I am especially grateful to our sponsors, whose support was crucial to the realization of the exhibition: Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, the ISLAA (Institute for Studies on Latin American Art), the GPM Fund, Solita Mishaan, Andrea and José Olympio Pereira, and the Sicardi Gallery, Houston. Additionally, I thank Carol Goldberg, Agnes Gund, and an anonymous donor for their ongoing support of the Hunter College Art Galleries. I could not have produced the exhibition without the collaboration of its many significant private and institutional lenders: Estrellita Brodsky; Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and Caracas; Cecilia de Torres LTD., New York; Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York; Pablo Henning; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Andrea and José Olympio Pereira; and all lenders who wish to remain anonymous. I extend a special thanks to the Fundación Gego, Caracas, and the Gerd Leufert Estate for their exhibition support and collaboration. I am enormously grateful to Founder Maria Inés Sicardi and Director Annalisa Palmieri Briscoe of the Sicardi Gallery for their instrumental support and in-depth collaboration in securing fundamental loans for the exhibition. I would also like to give thanks to Cecilia de Torres and Henrique Faria for opening up their gallery vaults and letting me view their inventory of works by these two incredible artists. I would like to extend my gratitude to Kathy Curry, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, and David Moreno, Preparator, at The Museum of Modern Art for their incredible assistance with the museum’s loans. I am also thankful to Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, along with Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Director and Chief Curator, Skye Monson, Collections Manager, and John Robinette, Manager of Storage and Installation, for their wonderful loans and great interest in the show. I would like to express my immense gratitude to my mentor and my friend, Luis Pérez-Oramas, The Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art at The Museum of Modern Art, for his continuous guidance and inspiration. Last, but not least, I thank my family: my beloved husband, Ruy Guimarães, and my darling son, Joaquim Bolt Guimarães, for their unconditional love and support, which give meaning to my life; to my parents, Luz and Enrique Gutiérrez, who guided me and led me to where I am today; and to my lovely sister, Ursula Gutiérrez, and my beautiful niece, Malory Emma Rios, both of whom I love very much. — GEANINNE GUTIÉRREZ-GUIMARÃES

Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue

Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” Curated by Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães Organized by Sarah Watson and Annie Wischmeyer www.gegoandgerd.org The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery October 3–November 22, 2014 Hunter College, The City University of New York Jennifer J. Raab, President Vita Rabinowitz, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Andrew J. Polsky, Acting Ruth and Harold Newman Dean, School of Arts and Sciences Howard Singerman, Phyllis and Joseph Caroff Chair, Department of Art and Art History Hunter College Art Galleries Howard Singerman, Executive Director Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History and Director Katy Siegel, Chief Curator Sarah Watson, Acting Director and Curator Annie Wischmeyer, Assistant Curator Jocelyn Spaar, Assistant to the Director Phi Nguyen, Preparator Tim Laun, Director of Operations, Hunter College MFA Campus The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery Hunter West Building 68th Street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue New York, New York 10065 Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 1–6pm Information: 212-772-4991 www.hunter.cuny.edu/art/galleries Designed by Elizabeth Ashley Fox Edited by Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães and Amelia Kutschbach Printed by Digital City Edition of 500 2014 ISBN: 978-0-9887976-9-7 All images courtesy Fundación Gego, Caracas, and the Gerd Leufert Estate. Hunter College and the Hunter College Art Galleries thank the generous sponsors of “Gego and Gerd Leufert: a dialogue” who have made this exhibition possible. These include Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, ISLAA (Institute for Studies on Latin American Art), the GPM Fund, Solita Mishaan, Andrea and José Olympio Pereira, and Sicardi Gallery, Houston. We are also extremely grateful for the leadership support of the Hunter College Art Galleries provided by Carol Goldberg and Agnes Gund, and by an anonymous donor. Through this, they have been key to the realization of this unique exhibition.