Mexican Modernist Master Silvered Cast Abstract Sculpture Relief Gunther Gerzso

Artist: Gunther Gerzso  |  Period: 1970-1979  |  Style: Constructivist  |  Dimensions: H: 26.0, W: 13.0, D: 3 IN

This piece is cast in some sort of stone or grainy resin material and then silvered with metallic paint.

it is signed and dated.

Gunther Gerzso was born on June 17, 1915 in Mexico City during the Revolution. His parents were Oscar Gerzso, a Hungarian immigrant, and Dore Wendland, German by birth.The economic crisis during the revolution caused the family to flee to Europe in 1922.

The family returned to Mexico two years later and her mother divorced. Not being able to provide for the children, she sent Gunther to Lugano, Switzerland to live with his uncle Dr. Hans Wendland, who was an influential name in the art world.

Gunther, then a teenager, met Paul Klee and lived among his uncle's collection of paintings which included works by Pierre Bonnard, Rembrandt, Paul Cezanne, Eugene Delacroix and Titian. During his time in Lugano, he also met Nando Tamberlani, noted set designer who would introduce him to the world of theater. In the late 1930s Gerszo also started painting as a hobby. The steady parade of beautiful actresses and interesting people he met in show business provided him with a great inspiration for his canvases which showed a mix of European and Mexican influences. His friend, Bernard Pfriem, convinced him to enter the annual Art Exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art where two of his works were selected. It was then that Gunther Gerzso started considering himself a painter more than a set designer.

Although comparatively unknown outside the art cognoscenti, Gunther Gerzso is viewed by some critics as comparable to Pablo Picasso and Joaquin Torres-Garcia. He is "one of the great Latin American painters," according to Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize-winning Mexican author. In 1941 Gerzso and his wife moved permanently to Mexico City and in 1944 he joined a group of surrealist painters that had taken refuge from the Second World War in Mexico. These artists were Benjamin Peret, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Alice Rahon and Wolfgang Paalen. His works from this period show a clear surrealist influence, which he later abandoned when he started working his famous abstracts. Gerzso investigated a myriad of styles and subjects, including European modernism, cubism, and surrealism. Many of Gerzso’s drawings are strongly reminiscent of Picasso, Cezanne, and Matisse. Other pieces show the influence of the Mexican artists Jose Clemente Orozco, David Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, Carlos Orozco Romero and Julio Castellanos. Concurrently, his exploration into Surrealism began when friend and fellow painter, Juan O'Gorman, introduced Gerzso to the works of Varo, Carrington, Peret, Rohan, Paalen, and Roberto Matta. As these early influences demonstrate, Gunther Gerzso began his artistic journey by following the Latin American and Western traditions. After inundating himself in these established styles, he was able to break away and explore his own vision. Using defracted space and layered planes of color, he created a new Constructivist vision. According to Octavio Paz, Gunther Gerzso was one of the greatest Latin American painters, since it was him, along with Carlos Merida and Rufino Tamayo, who opposed the ideologist aesthetic movement into which muralism had degenerated. Gunther Gerzso was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and later in 1978 he was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Bellas Artes. Gunther Gerzso died on April 21, 2000. His sculpture work bears the influence of Arnaldo Pomodoro. An expert in the technique and craftsmanship of his sculptural vocation, Mexican artist Jorge González Velázquez, also a painter, has not only produced in his artistic career a vast quantity of impeccably-made pieces, he has also shared with his contemporary colleagues the know-how he has acquired through his daily work and during his years of professional studies at the National Institute of Fine Arts' "La Esmeralda" National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving. He has given advice to such celebrated authors as Juan Soriano, Pedro friedeberg, Gunther Gerzso and José Luis Cuevas and worked with them in the casting of many three-dimensional creations.