GUNTHER GERZSO (1915-2000)

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GUNTHER GERZSO, the antecedents of his painting

Original text by Carlos M. Luis
Translated by Gretchen Van Camp
Especial/El Nuevo Herald, March 7, 2004

There are artists that in a given moment will renounce their past. Whatever trace of what they have done in earlier periods has intolerable results and they do everything possible to erase it. Gunther Gerzso was one of these artists.

During the period 1961-1969 he began a new painting style that announced his surrender to abstractionism. He wanted to make a clean break from the figurative painting that he had been doing up until this time. He did this by trying to destroy all of his production. He was unable to do so, and as a result, the collection of works that was amassed between 1941 and 1945 by Thomas Ireland - friend of the painter when he was a designer at the Cleveland Playhouse - can now be seen in almost its entirety.

Gerzso was born in Mexico in 1915 to a Hungarian family of Jewish origin. He died in Mexico City in 2000. During the 1920s, Gerzso was in contact with the collection of his uncle, Dr. Hans Wendlend - known historian and dealer of art - at his residence in Switzerland. His early experiences with classic paintings and some vanguard works such as those by Paul Klee, served as a base for his artistic development.

It was, however, Gerzso's introduction to the world of theatre that made his career take off, first in Mexico and then in Cleveland, where he began his friendship with the painter Bernard Pfreim, who encouraged him to dedicate himself to painting.

In 1938, Andre Breton arrived in Mexico, and later on, many surrealists established themselves in Mexico, escaping the Nazi-fascism that threatened to devour Europe, among them, the poet Benjamin Peret and the painter Wolfgang Paalen who befriended the young Gerzso. His work then took a turn with his surrealist inspiration with political elements that were so in fashion during those turbulent years.

Leon Trotsky also arrived in Mexico, escaping being a victim of Stalin. For many intellectuals, Gerzso among them, the figure of Russian exile was converted to a symbol of rebellion against both totalitarianisms: communism and fascism.

It wasn't, however, until 1941 that Gerzso was dedicated to his painting, not without first leaving a large group of works (drawings, sketches for the theatre, gouaches) that his friend Ireland was dedicated to collecting. This didn't impede him from continuing to work in the art of the spectacle, this time in the movies (1941-1963) where he helped design more than 150 stage scenes for directors like Alejandro Galindo, Luis Bunuel, John Ford and Ives Allegret, among others.

Although the painting that Gerzso experimented with in the 1940s had a great surrealist influence (Ives Tanguey was an important source for Gerzso while discovering this movement), the powerful presence of the land and Mexican culture also formed an important part of Gerzso's visual vocabulary. Pre-Colombian art - that can be encountered anywhere in this country - found its place in his work. Ultimately he detached himself from his figurative past to penetrate the world of abstractionism.

But, it wasn't only the remote past that claimed a spot in his painting. This so-called "Mexicaness" that captured painters like Diego Rivera and Orozco, photographers like Alvarez Bravo or composers like Carlos Chavez, can be seen in Gerzso's work, the work that is now being presented in the gallery Artspace, Virginia Miller Galleries.

They serve as points of reference for his biographical data that we mentioned as background for an exhibition that for many reasons constitutes a revelation. Revelation, without a doubt, because it discovers the transition of the world of art of a painter who is based in an abstract style. This abstract style (of straight lines - strongly architectonic) is represented in only three works in the exhibition, dedicated exclusively to demonstrate the reverse of the production of this important artist.

It was always thought and has now been confirmed that to understand the background work of a painter, it is necessary to turn to the artist's early works. Drawings, watercolors, etc. that serve as points of departure to explore other dimensions.

The visitor will have an occasion to discover some of the scenes that Gerzso designed for the theatre, or in drawings, the seed sown for his great later work. In other works we are taken by surprise at the sharp look that responds to a well-assimilated tradition: that of the great European masters that he had occasion to study during his stay in Europe. In short, an exhibition that art lovers in general as well as those that follow the artistic career or Gunther Gerzso will enjoy fully.