I like the way he breaks through conventions, accepts no limitations. He's exciting, funky...
I couldn't get that link to work, JL. There is an interesting article in today's NYT on a Mexican abstract painter whose work is being shown at the Santa Barbara Art Museum. A name like Gerzko. Well, I will see if I managed to save the link.
Aha, I did. But I am having trouble posting it.
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Yeah, I couldn't either. Sorry. I saw two paintings by Gunther Gerzso when the Gelman collection came to town about two years ago. I was VERY impressed, had to go back and see them again. His work is hard edged yet sensual. An oxymoron in description but not in perception. Brllliant colors and very original compositions. Now that he's dead, he's becoming famous. There's no justice in that. The thing you couldn't download was a statement introducing some paintings. It stated something like, "Isn't it strange, for the last two decades pundits have been proclaiming the death of painting, yet everywhere we see it alive...."
ESP. I was about to post that link to the Gerzso article when I found that they didn't have my favorite painting of his in the online edition. This led me to Google images -- it wasn't there, but there was a lot of interesting stuff. Recommended -- and will have to do for the likes of me who ain't gonna get to Santa Barbara anytime soon!
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Tartarin, the Gerzso that impressed me the most was a hard-edge painting with red forms (like edifices) on the right, and blue and green ones on the left of the picture. Could that be the one you refer to? It is a very powerful image. Too bad I can't remember its title.
I loved that one, but in the print edition of the NYT there was a yellow, horizontal one with touches of red. Also in the Google images is a WONDERFUL one of layers of stone (2) curtaining down from the top. If you open up some of them, you get commentarios, entrevistas, algunos en espanol, others in English.
Great minds run in the same channels...
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Yes, Tartarin. I checked out Google>images>Gunther Gerzso and found it. It is titled Frida7. Not exactly as I described it but close. It is, of course, MUCH grander and more powerful in person.
I don't happen to have $1000 lying around the house, but if I did, I'd take a close look at one of Gerzso's prints... That curtain of stone one really got to me...
I've forgotten why it was thought that painting might have died?
I looked up Gerzso - i love them. Is he American or German? or something else/
Lovely colours and forms and sustaining works that you would love to live with and return to look again.
He's Mexican, but his parents were Hungarian and German -- you can guess from his name which was which!
I know this is a painting thread, but I would like to say that Mexico has some really exciting stuff going on culturally and I sometimes feel it's being missed up here. I'm not well informed enough to start a thread, but we might want to consider a thread about Mexican art -- any and all. Or maybe there's been one already?
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Vivien, if I recall from the article, he's Mexican born, of German and Polish (no, Hungarian--thanks, Tartarin) parents.
One of the things I appreciate in Gerzso's work is the way he often combines "cold" (hard edge) structure (an obvious influence from cubism, although he is decidely not that) and the "warmth" (i.e., passion) of his colors. I usually find painters (including myself) to usually paint structural images with cold colors or painterly images with warm colors. The way he uses the opposition of warm (color) and cold (forms) is wonderful. Does anybody see that also, or is it only my subjectivity here?
No - I totally agree but you'd already said it and i forgot say how much il liked your comments. I agree totally with what you said, i thought you 'read' them well.
Unfortunately the reproductions are so tiny that i know i am missing out terribly and can only envy you having seen the originals.
Thanks for the info on his origins.
If he ever shows in England i would love to see them.
So one of you could start one or more Mexico and culture/art threads, no? Not to nag, but a lot of us are interested and maybe we can pick up some google mates.
JL, I wish you would do one of them... Nag, Nag....
I agree, JL, but it's also the almost trompe l'oeil scale of his paintings, very reminiscent of the scale of the Mexican landscape,that caught my eye. And the likeness to Leger.
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I must leave til Wed. In the meantime I will thought to thread on Mexican Art. A VERY interesting topic.
