Gego: The Lines of a Life

“Even though she didn’t speak much, or didn’t like speaking much about herself or her life, it’s all interwoven. And if you learn to read through the language of abstraction, you also see that the lines are also the lines of a life.” – Pablo León de la Barra, Curator at Large, Latin America, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation

This Guggenheim-produced documentary explores the life and legacy of one of the most significant artists to emerge from Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century.

Gego, or Gertrud Goldschmidt (b. 1912, Hamburg; d. 1994, Caracas), first trained as an architect and engineer at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart (now Universität Stuttgart). Fleeing Nazi persecution in 1939, she immigrated to Venezuela, where she settled permanently, fully embarking on an artistic career in the 1950s that would span more than four decades. In sculptures, drawings, prints, and textiles, Gego traced a markedly individual path through her organic forms, linear structures, and spatial investigations.

This video was created on the occasion of “Gego: Measuring Infinity,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, March 31–September 10, 2023.

“Gego: Measuring Infinity” is cocurated by Pablo León de la Barra, Curator at Large, Latin America, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York.