GUNTHER GERZSO (1915-2000)

Collection Overview | Biography | Chronology | Images | Exhibitions | Press

Modernist Gunther Gerzso Finally Getting His Due

By Mary Houlihan
Chicago Sun-Times, March 21, 2004

"Gunther Gerzso. Rumor has it that he is our best abstract painter. That is quite true, but it's not the whole story: he is one of the great Latin American painters."
-- Octavio Paz, 1963

A year ago at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, fans of Mexican art were getting their first taste of Gunther Gerzso. The exhibit was Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and 20th Century Mexican Art: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, a widely diverse show that attracted a larger-than-usual audience for the museum. Gerzso was one of the many artists clumped in the pack somewhere behind the works of the two Mexican icons who admittedly were the big draw.

But many who went in to view the big paintings by Kahlo and Rivera came out wondering: Who is Gunther Gerzso and where can I see more of his work? The answer to both questions can be found in Risking the Abstract: Mexican Modernism and the Art of Gunther Gerzso, a spectacular and well-deserved retrospective of the artist's work, now on display at the Pilsen-based museum.

Widely considered Mexico's finest abstract painter, Gerzso, who died in 2000 at the age 84, is little known outside his homeland. Organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the current show is the artist's first in the United States since a 1970 retrospective at the Phoenix Art Museum. In the exhibit, more than 100 paintings form a picture of Gerzso's career, one that went against the grain of Mexico's dominate art form - social and political-themed murals - and instead begat shimmering, geometric and colorful abstractions that evoke the best spiritual qualities of bold Mexican-inspired art.

The show's curator, Diana du Pont, worked closely with Gerzso until his death.

"He had a complete photo archive of his work, and we would sit for hours in his studio and go through all the images," recalled du Pont. "He commented on each painting and his words assisted me in how I felt about the final selections for the show. And they continue to inspire me as the show is installed in Chicago."

Gerzso was often seen as "an educated gentleman with an imposing demeanor," said du Pont. But possibly because she met him later in life when he had "chilled out," Gerzso to her was "very funny, very warm and very charming." He also was very open about his past, about his reception in the Mexican art world.

Before World War II, Mexico was on par with Paris as a modern art center. But after the war, the energy moved to New York, and Gerzso fell between the cracks. For decades, he went unrecognized by the Mexican art world, which was focused on the murals of los tres grandes - Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco.

"You were supposed to create socially relevant art and of course, he was doing easel paintings, which were not considered in the same vein," said du Pont. "He was not a valued member of society in terms of the government's official art circles. I think he struggled with that and agonized over being out of place. But in taking this risk, following his own path, he became a symbolic bridge between surrealism and the new wave of Mexican art known as La Raptura in the 1950s."

Gerzso's life story is a complex and interesting tale that moves from Mexico to Switzerland and Ohio and back to Mexico. He was born in Mexico City in 1915 to a Hungarian father and German mother. At the age of 12, Gerzso was sent to southern Switzerland where he lived with an uncle who was an art historian, art dealer and collector. It was there, surrounded by works of art, that he got his formal art education.

Gerzso studied the Old Masters and was given Le Corbusier's book Towards a New Architecture, which sparked a lifelong interest in architecture. He discovered the abstract works of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, as well as the writings of Hermann Hesse, his uncle's neighbor. He also met with Nando Tamberlani, an Italian stage designer, who encouraged the fledgling artist to become a set designer.

In 1929, the family like many others, suffered repercussions from the stock market crash, and Gerzso returned to Mexico, where he completed his education at a German school in Mexico City. Tamberlani's influence paid off when, rather than pursuing art, he went to work as a set designer at the Cleveland (Ohio) Play House, considered an important cutting-edge regional theatre in the '30s.

After returning to Mexico in the 1941, Gerzso struggled financially and eventually took a job as a set designer for the film Santa. This job began what would become 20 years of working on films for Churubusco Studios; painting time was relegated to weekends.

Gerzso was perhaps the best known set designer during Mexico's golden age of cinema. In addition to Mexican directors, he also worked with John Huston and Luis Bunuel. In 1962, he decided to dedicate his time to painting and was lured back to the movies only once to work on John Huston's 1984 film Under the Volcano.

Gerzso, who never went to art school and was self-taught, came late to Mexican surrealism but early to the fledgling abstract movement. His early surrealist works are dark and disturbing with melting, disjointed figures moving about a nightmarish landscape. As he moved toward the abstract, using techniques inspired by the European Old Masters, his paintings began to evoke brilliantly colored blocks (his muse was a simple square) meticulously constructed in unconventional proportions.

"He creates this mystery inside these abstractions, which makes them captivating," said du Pont. "He loved technique, and I think people are mesmerized by something that could be quite conventional but is beautiful in context. The combination of the content, the technique and the sheer love of painting is what makes these works so attractive."

In 1951, after his first one-man show, he was criticized for a lack of Mexicanidad (a Mexican sensibility). Throughout his life, he was on a constant search for his roots; he became fascinated by the traditional cultures of Mexico and became a student of pre-Columbian art.

"He easily navigated from one culture to another," said du Pont. "The irony is that in a sense he became a foreigner in his own land. I think in a way this caused him agony. He wasn't Mexican enough because he was considered international. In a way that irony is the juice that makes his art so compelling. The goal of this exhibit is to fuse together all these different influences and show that without this complex mix you would not have Gunther Gerzso. His work is not one thing or the other but a fusion of everything from his life."

One of Gerzso's more stunning works, Nocturnal Landscape (1999), is a study in shades of blue with a lighter square representing the moon, floating in the sky while the lower half of the painting is inhabited by rectangles and squares in some sort of futuristic landscape. Earlier abstractions are less formally constructed, with large squares and odd shapes seeming to devour the mosaic-like world existing around them. All display Gerzso's unique eye for design and color that is stunning in its complex simplicity.

Working with the Mexican government, Gerzso and later, his wife, Jean, it took du Pont five years to assemble this show. She often mentions the "wow" factor in his work, describing it as "a feeling of not quite believing that a human being has created these paintings."

"I hope that the show will communicate on an emotional, spiritual and simple aesthetic level to all who see it," she said. "Once you're drawn in, you begin to learn all these other things about pre-Columbian art, international modernism and the Mexican art movement at mid-century. So I think that the sheer beauty of his paintings, no matter how old fashioned that sounds, has a real value in attracting people to his work."