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Lot Essay
Gunther Gerzso's work reflects self-contained realities that dramatize affaires de coeur. Preferring to avoid the anecdotal or to reveal the identity of things, Gerzso focuses on trapping the feeling that shapes the event. It is a great paradox that his short-lived Greek Period, containing a feeling of open generosity, resembling nothing like he had ever created or would create again, is little understood. Produced between the spring of 1959 and the winter of 1961 following a brief trip to Greece, Gerzso, attempting to capture the lingering memory, created this harmonious interlude, in an otherwise dissonant oeuvre. These 36 quiet, contemplative paintings and few drawings narrate the tragic love story of a failed rapprochement.
In Recuerdo de Grecia (1959), the alpha of the group, two lines representing the main characters of the event meet in the middle. Although Gerzso did not paint with prior knowledge of what would be the end product, he created these particular works with absolute freedom. Unable to afford canvas, he made them on heavy board, drawing freely over sand, crushed pumice stone, or marble powder, to create rich textures that make the viewer want to caress them. After finishing the painting, Gerzso studied it for a long time, gratefully surprised how it drew from the sublime. Although moved by what he saw, he would have preferred for the lines to be closer, but his unconscious had not permitted it. A similar event with comparable dynamics recurs in Signos (1959) and Delos (1960), two other works from the period.
In January of 1961, tired of allowing himself to feel vulnerable for so long, Gerzso, consciously, decided to bring this interlude to an end, and using anger as a shielding device, to distance himself from feelings of loss, he produced the omega of the Greek Period. The painting's original title was Abschied, which in German means farewell, but Gerzso, thinking the title too sentimental (and revealing), changed his mind and renamed it Ávila Negra--although Spain could not have been further from his mind when he came up with the new title. Ávila Negra, an imposing, monumental work, painted in a palette of severe grays, makes the emotional content more sobering. Oddly, the composition, which condenses a guillotine blade suspended over open wounds, is the re-worked background of a most gentle composition, Renoir's Girl with a Watering Can, at the National Gallery, Washington. Ávila Negra, the first work Gerzso created that bears elements of sadism, clears the way for the development of the iconography for which he is best known. Led by a melancholic temperament and identified with the dark side of the psyche, after creating Ávila Negra, Gerzso would explore in solitude his anguish, his despair, even horror, to create an art obsessed with dissonance--anything to avoid vulnerability.
Salomon Grimberg
Dallas, March 2005
We are grateful to Dr. Salomon Grimberg for his assistance in cataloguing the present painting.
In Recuerdo de Grecia (1959), the alpha of the group, two lines representing the main characters of the event meet in the middle. Although Gerzso did not paint with prior knowledge of what would be the end product, he created these particular works with absolute freedom. Unable to afford canvas, he made them on heavy board, drawing freely over sand, crushed pumice stone, or marble powder, to create rich textures that make the viewer want to caress them. After finishing the painting, Gerzso studied it for a long time, gratefully surprised how it drew from the sublime. Although moved by what he saw, he would have preferred for the lines to be closer, but his unconscious had not permitted it. A similar event with comparable dynamics recurs in Signos (1959) and Delos (1960), two other works from the period.
In January of 1961, tired of allowing himself to feel vulnerable for so long, Gerzso, consciously, decided to bring this interlude to an end, and using anger as a shielding device, to distance himself from feelings of loss, he produced the omega of the Greek Period. The painting's original title was Abschied, which in German means farewell, but Gerzso, thinking the title too sentimental (and revealing), changed his mind and renamed it Ávila Negra--although Spain could not have been further from his mind when he came up with the new title. Ávila Negra, an imposing, monumental work, painted in a palette of severe grays, makes the emotional content more sobering. Oddly, the composition, which condenses a guillotine blade suspended over open wounds, is the re-worked background of a most gentle composition, Renoir's Girl with a Watering Can, at the National Gallery, Washington. Ávila Negra, the first work Gerzso created that bears elements of sadism, clears the way for the development of the iconography for which he is best known. Led by a melancholic temperament and identified with the dark side of the psyche, after creating Ávila Negra, Gerzso would explore in solitude his anguish, his despair, even horror, to create an art obsessed with dissonance--anything to avoid vulnerability.
Salomon Grimberg
Dallas, March 2005
We are grateful to Dr. Salomon Grimberg for his assistance in cataloguing the present painting.