Gego took up her practice as an artist in the early 1950s. She embarked on a search for a visual language of her own and experimented with various drawing and painting techniques. Using intense, expressive colours, she painted the tropical landscape around her and experimented with different techniques such as pencil, ink, and charcoal drawings, collages, and prints. Soon, she moved away from the colourful, expressionist style of her early works towards a reduced and delicate visual language, where linear forms and the free play of lines took centre stage.

In the late 1960s, Gego created numerous works that depict net and grid structures, reminiscent of the constructive drawings of Paul Klee (Klee created these as part of his teaching at the Bauhaus to convey the relationship between form, space, and movement). Unlike Klee’s drawings, Gego’s net structures always appear to be only fragments of a larger whole. They are characterised by complex, intertwined lines that create the impression of a threedimensional structure. Concurrently with the creation of these drawings, Gego transferred the principle of intertwining individual lines into complex systems by translating it into spatial form through her immersive installations, which she called Reticuláreas.

Many of Gego’s works are based on the principle of parallel lines, whose paths slightly diverge, creating optical effects and spatially evocative structures. This group includes both works on paper and sculptures.

Reticuláreas are immersive installations made of wire, consisting of countless triangular or quadrangular elements woven into a spatial structure. In June 1969, Gego created her first Reticulárea at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas—a work considered a milestone in her artistic career. With such works, Gego challenged the traditional concept of sculpture: instead of creating solid, static forms, the Reticuláreas are designed as flexible, modular net structures that permeate the space and can be experienced from various perspectives.

In the 1960s, Gego worked in printmaking workshops in San Francisco and New York, as well as with artist Mauricio Lasansky in Iowa. There, she explored the artistic possibilities of various printing techniques and gained practical experience. A significant portion of her prints was created at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. Gego used various printing techniques, such as lithography (drawing on stone or metal), etching (etching lines into metal plates), or embossing (a technique that creates a raised or recessed image, even without the use of colour).

In the late 1980s, Gego created a series of small-format sculptures she called “Bichos” or “Bichitos.” In Venezuelan parlance, “Bicho” means “animal,” “vermin,” or “creature.” The term was already used in the 1960s by Brazilian artist Lygia Clark for small, movable sculptures made of geometric shapes. Gego’s “Bichos” are characterised by irregular, curved forms and simple materials.

Gertrud Louise Goldschmidt, known as “Gego”, was born in 1912 in Hamburg into a German-Jewish banking family. She initially studied engineering with a focus on architecture at the Technical University of Stuttgart under architect Paul Bonatz. She was among the last Jewish graduates to receive a diploma in Nazi Germany. Due to the rapidly escalating anti-Semitic discrimination and violence, she left Germany in 1939, right after her graduation. She first travelled to the United Kingdom and subsequently moved to Venezuela—a country to which she had no prior connection.

At that time, Venezuela was experiencing an economic boom and offered refuge to those fleeing Germany. In the capital, Caracas, Goldschmidt built a new life. She connected with other European emigrants, including Germans. In 1940, she married businessman Ernst Gunz, with whom she founded a furniture design workshop, built two houses, and raised two children. The couple separated in the 1950s. Goldschmidt then met the German-Lithuanian artist and designer Gerd Leufert, who became her partner. In 1952, she received Venezuelan citizenship. Together with Leufert, she turned to art from 1953 onwards.

In the 1950s, a vibrant art scene developed in Venezuela, shaped by artists such as Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005), Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923– 2019), and Alejandro Otero (1921–1990), where geometric abstraction flourished. This scene embodied the spirit of innovation and progress, as well as the search for a cultural identity independent of traditional art centers. The artists of this generation aimed to break free from the influence of European and academic art with a “universal” visual language. Gego was friends with Soto and Otero, who supported her artistic development.

After initial successes as an artist, Gego also worked as a lecturer from the late 1950s, including at the Faculty of Architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, where she led a basic design course modelled after the Bauhaus. In the following decades, she spent extended periods in the USA, where she made contacts, furthered her art education, participated in exhibitions, and was a guest at various institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the Pratt Institute in New York. She also worked in various print workshops, including the renowned Tamarind Lithography Workshop in San Francisco and the studio of Argentine artist Mauricio Lasansky in Iowa City. Later, she was one of the founders of the Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados (TAGA), a printing workshop in Caracas.

Gego’s work connects with the legacy of German Bauhaus modernism but also seamlessly integrates into the Latin American avant-garde after World War II. With her abstract drawings, prints, and sculptures, Gego significantly contributed to the development of geometric abstraction and kinetic art in Latin America, which became the dominant avant-garde art movement from Venezuela to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina in the 1960s. Many representatives of geometric abstraction in Latin America, including Gego, had European roots or were influenced by European art movements like the Bauhaus, but they also engaged intensively with regional cultural and social conditions.

Since the 1990s, Gego’s works have increasingly been included in the collections of major museums in Europe and North America. The most significant collection of Gego’s works in Europe is housed at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The works shown in the exhibition come from this collection. 

Fokus. Gego (Getrud Goldschmidt)
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
20.9.2025 – 18.1.2026

Acknowlegements
We thank the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the Fundación Gego, Caracas, Venezuela, for their collaboration.

Digital Guide
Implementation: Netnode AG
Project Management: Dominik Imhof

The Zentrum Paul Klee is fully accessible and offers inclusive events.

With support from