Press Release
ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries
To
Present World Premiere Exhibition
Of Mexican Master Gunther
Gerzso
January 25, 2004
South Florida art enthusiasts will have a rare opportunity
to view a world premiere exhibition of more than 100
early works of the Mexican master artist Gunther Gerzso
at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries from February through
April 2004.
Gerzso is “one of the great Latin American painters,” according
to Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize-winning Mexican author.
New York Times critic Stephen Kinzer places Gerzso among
a group of pioneering artists, including Roberto Matta,
Joaquín Torres-Garcia, and Wifredo Lam, whose
work mixes “the subtlety and psychological depth
of European art with Latin America’s vibrant passions
and tragic sense of life.”
Titled “Gunther Gerzso: Defining Mexican Abstractionism,” most
of the 82 drawings and paintings in the ArtSpace/Virginia
Miller Galleries exhibition are part of the collection
of Thomas Ireland, an actor who became a close friend
of Gerzso’s when he was a set designer at the Cleveland
Playhouse. The Ireland Collection works were done from
1935 to 1941; a number of later paintings are being added
to the show as examples of Gerzso’s nonrepresentational,
architectonic paintings.
“This is the first time these early works have
ever been exhibited. It’s fascinating to see how
Gerzso progressed stylistically as he evolved as an artist,” stated
Virginia Miller. “These drawings and paintings
have been called pivotal to understanding the visual
language that Gerzso later created.”
The show coincides with a major
current exhibition, “Risking
the Abstract: Mexican Modernism and the Art of Gunther
Gerzso,” being shown at the Museum of Modern Art
in Mexico City from November 12–February 22 and
at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago from
March 19–June 27, 2004.
The retrospective was launched
at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art from JulyOctober
2003. “We need to look at the figures who shaped
this (Latin American) art in the 20th century,” noted
Santa Barbara Museum Director Phillip M. Johnston in
the exhibition catalog. “Gerzso is right up there
with the best of them.” The museum’s exhibition
tracks the artist’s development, according to Johnston, “showing
how his particular achievements stand as a defining example
of modern abstraction.”
Before he pioneered abstract art in his native country,
Gerzso worked as a set designer at the Cleveland Playhouse.
During those years, from 1935 to 1941, he began developing
as a fine artist, exploring various styles. Most of the
works in the Coral Gables exhibition are from this period.
“To be able to see so many works done by a major
artist during his formative years is an extraordinary
opportunity,” notes gallery owner Virginia Miller. “Much
of the earliest work by so many master artists was discarded
or destroyed, because they did not appreciate its value
in terms of art history. The works that survive often
become sought after by scholars and collectors. The early
works of Picasso, for example, have become quite valuable.”
Gerzso is best known for his mature
work: geometric abstractions, whose jewel-like glazes
feature colors and textures that suggest the cultural
heritage of Mexico. Several of these are in the ArtSpace/Virginia
Miller Galleries exhibit. “I want to give viewers a well-rounded
experience of Gerzso’s art,” Miller said.
According to Octavio Paz, “In all Gerzso’s
pictures there is a secret. His painting indicates its
existence behind the canvas. The depicted rendings, mutilations
and sexual hollows have a function: they allude to what
lies on the other side.”
Diana C. du Pont, curator of the “Risking the
Abstract” exhibition, observes that Gerzso often
is “expressing a reality behind surface reality...the
necessity for mystery and poetry in art.”
Although he has been called the
pioneer of Mexican abstraction, Gerzso did not consider
his works abstract. Strongly influenced by Mexico’s pre-Columbian art and architecture, “Gerzso
moved from a literary-based Surrealism to an abstract
Surrealism on his way to a Mexican form of Abstract Expressionism,
one that emphasized the architectonic over the gestural,” according
to du Pont, who notes that Gerzso’s style is rooted
in nature and the human figure, particularly the female
figure.
Born in Mexico in 1915 of Hungarian and German parents,
Gerzso was sent to live with an uncle in Switzerland
in the early 1920s, when he was 12. His uncle was an
art historian and dealer, and the youthful artist was
surrounded by Old Masters.
“I got my art education from my mother’s
brother, an art dealer in Switzerland,” Gerzso
said. “He sold pieces of the caliber of Rembrandt,
Cézanne, Titian.”
Their neighbors in Lugano were
Paul Klee and Herman Hesse, but it was an Italian set
designer who most impressed the youthful Gerzso. He
moved back to Mexico when he was 18, and through his
family associations with the emigré community, he was offered an apprenticeship
at the Cleveland Playhouse, one of the nation’s
leading theater companies.
Within a few years he was designing its sets and occasionally,
costumes as well. Some of the early works in the ArtSpace/Virginia
Miller Galleries exhibition are set designs and costume
studies, while others from this period are sketches,
drawings and small paintings influenced by artists such
as Picasso, George Grosz, Matisse, and Giorgio de Chirico.
It wasn’t until two of his
drawings were selected for an exhibition at the Cleveland
Museum of Art in May of 1939 that Gerzso decided that
he wanted to concentrate on being a painter.
Although he continued to make a living as a set designer,
particularly in Mexican movies, from that time onwards
he began to perfect the painting techniques that he needed
in order to express his abstract concepts.
“Gunther Gerzso: Defining Mexican Abstractionism,” will
be exhibited at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries from
February 6–April 30, with receptions from 7-10
p.m. on February 6th, March 5th and April 2nd.
Open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and
by appointment, the gallery is located at 169 Madeira
Ave., in the heart of the Coral Gables business district.
For more information, call 305-444-4493.
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