Gunther Gerzso the Appearance of the Invisible
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Gunther Ge rz so The Appearance of the Invisible a t l u c a n o C f o y s e t r u o C he urgency of freeing the spirit from the In 1931, Gunther returned to Mexico to con - ideological blackmail of orthodoxy (whe - tinue his studies. Three years later he went into T ther in art or in politics) and the need the theater as a set designer, and director for space for an “intimist” sensibility —to allow for Fernando Wagner used his work in productions the appearance of the emotional and the abstract— of Molière, Lope de Vega and Shakes peare. Later, in surroundings dominated by the post revolu - encouraged by an American professor, he went to tionary epic journey were some of the motifs of Ohio and worked at the Cleveland Play house as Gunther Gerzso’s work. Painter, sculptor and an apprentice and assistant set designer from professional set designer, he founded the Mex - 1935 to 1941. Surprised by his talent, an art stu - ican abstractionist school, although he classified dent who thought that set design “had no future,” his style as “psychological realism.” recommended that he turn to painting. In what Born in Mexico City June 17, 1915, to Oscar would be a prophetic act, he gave Gunther the Gerzso and Dore Wendland, he was sent to paint and brushes with which he would execute Switzerland in 1927 to live with his uncle Hans his first canvas in 1940, Two Women . A little later Wendland, a collector who trained him in the he met and married Gene Rilla Cady. different schools and styles of art. In artistic He returned to Mexico in 1941 with the idea soirees he met painters like Paul Klee and set of dedicating himself fully to painting, but his designers like the Italian Nando Tamberlani, economic situation did not permit it. Gene and who were influential in his becoming an artist. Gunther decided to return to the United States. 116 In Memoriam The night before they were to leave, he received dazzling light, but at bottom, there is a black plane: the providential offer to design the sets for the fear,” he once confessed to Rita Eder ( Gunther third film version of the romantic novel Santa . Gerzso. El esplendor de la muralla [Mexico City: This would be the beginning of three decades of Co naculta- ERA 1994]). an intense career as a set designer for 137 films, In 1950, encouraged by the German painter most of them Mexican. “The cinema has allowed Otto Butterlin, he put on his first show at Inés me to see the world and life ... [and] how people Amor’s Mexican Art Gallery, at a time that was on the margins live, people like madmen.” not very propitious for paintings that did not rep - (Alfredo Camacho Olivares, “Homenaje na cio - resent the great artistic trends of the moment. nal a Gerzso en mayo,” Excélsior [Mexico City] Despite the show’s lack of success, the gallery 25 April 2000). Some of his paintings display a owner, very impressed with his pictorial propos - certain voyeurism as though the viewer were al, tried to convince him to continue. “Mr. looking through a keyhole. Gerzso, you are a painter above all else,” she said (Carlos Monsiváis, “Gunther Gerzo,” Letras libres 18 [June 2000], p. 84). Unbelieving, Gerzso “T HE IMAGE , thought he would concentrate wholly on set A C REATION OF THE SPIRIT ” design for film, but Gene en couraged him not to abandon painting. Although he admired Mexico’s muralists and pre-Hispanic art, particularly that of the Mayas, he was not interested in either government-line PUBLIC RECOGNITION nationalist painting or the great topics of the socialist left of the time. He sought a more uni - After 1960 Mexican critics and the public gradu - versal language, but a language that at the same ally opened up to the possibility that Mexican art time would mean a return to the “intimate could exist that had meaning from the universal homeland,” an aesthetic treatment of impres - human point of view, without being strictly com - sions and memories. His work takes the sedi - mitted to any particular ideology. This made it ment of dreams and Freud’s hypotheses very possible for the avant garde, represented by much into account. In 1944, he met the leading Gunther Gerzso, to receive more recognition and protagonists of surrealist painting exiled in opportunities. Throughout the 85 years of his life, Mexico (Remedios Varo and Leonora Carring - he eventually presented 30 individual exhibitions ton, among others). Immersed in that “school of and participated in 60 collective ones. Among the senses” that is Mexico and influenced by other honors, in 1963, the National Institute of surrealism, he tended toward its combination of Fine Arts organized a retrospective, and in 1994, ethics and aesthetics in the act of painting. Bird the Carrillo Gil Museum did the same; in 1984 Woman (1944) and the oil painting The Days on he was given the National Prize for Science and Gabino Barreda Street (1944) are two examples the Arts. That same year the book Gunther Gerzso of work from this period. was printed in Switzerland, including texts by Gerzso defined himself as an “intuitive Octavio Paz and John Golding. He was a member painter” and his painting as “the image of a state of the National System of Artists and a member of mind.” He used to say that technique is im - of its executive board until his death in April of portant only if an emotional element is obtained this year. California’s Santa Barbara Museum will from it, since each painting is a variant of the organize a retrospective of his work in 2002. primeval emotion. “When you want to look into my paintings, you will always find a wall that keeps María Cristina Hernández Escobar you from entering, [that] will stop you with its Assistant Editor 117.