Enrique Chagoya Yesterday Is Never Again

Gunther Gerzso,Personaje en Rojo y Azul, 1964, oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm. All images courtesy of Mary-Anne Martin Gallery.

In 1991 I invited the creative person Gunther Gerzso to participate in a give-and-take that was role of an international symposium entitled Poetry in Architecture.

The purpose of this gathering was to reflect on the poetic dimension in architecture and the visual arts. Gerzso, a painter, accepted the invitation withal never uttered a single word during the result. He later told me that he was suffering from depression at the time. His silence on that occasion gave us an excuse to begin a afterwards chat about his life and works. It was the moment at which our dialogue began—a dialogue that prospered until April 21, 2000, the mean solar day Gerzso's life ended.

For Gerzso, although reason intervenes in the creative process, intuition has the last word, for information technology synthesizes the known and the felt. The secret dialogue between intuition and reason is manifest in Gerzso's early sketches and drawings, which look more like the works of 1 of Goethe's alchemists than of a gimmicky painter. Once he defined the format of his sheet, Gerzso would dissect it with invisible lines that adjusted themselves to Fibonacci'southward aural section. They were guides for his intuition. The creative person would make some of them visible in guild to transform them into walls, cracks, or light beams nurtured on the color range of Mexican landscapes, which are so reminiscent of the pre-Hispanic universe.

The conversation that follows reveals a Gerzso whose life and works are a result both of his need to control things (reason), and of his yearning for liberty (intuition). Octavio Paz called him a "glacial spark," a reference to Gerzso's personality: a dazzling burn down that is coldly controlled.

José Antonio Aldrete-Haas You've said that a trip you fabricated to southeastern Mexico was decisive for your painting. Could you elaborate on this?

Gunther Gerzso When I traveled there in 1946 I discovered pre-Columbian art. I discovered information technology in the emotional sense, in the same style every bit someone who says, "I finally understood Mozart or Bach." I didn't care whether the art belonged to the Mayan, Aztec or Totonacan culture. The fact was that I was very impressed by most of those objects. I guess this could sound ridiculous considering my mother was German and my father Hungarian. What did I accept to practice with pre-Columbian fine art? And yet I was attracted to it in a tremendously emotional way. I began collecting it. I can't explain it: I felt that I had something in mutual with the artists who had created these objects. And I as well told myself, I live in Mexico and up to this moment I have been creating a sort of European Surrealist art influenced by Max Ernst, Tanguy, Dalí and others. Why don't I make something that belongs to this country?

As a result of this I first painted a slice that was merely intuitive. I nevertheless work that way. To begin a painting I initially depict many lines on the canvas. Sometimes goose egg comes out. Suddenly, I describe lines in the identify where they belong, and at that place it is: a existence that was underwater comes to the surface and slowly comes to life. And then I see it the adjacent 24-hour interval and choose what stays and what goes, until I convince myself that the piece is set up, live. I've been working the aforementioned way since 1946. In painting y'all tin can't have much control over the outcome because sometimes i matter comes out and other times something else happens. Yous have to obey inspiration, despite my dislike of the term. There have been times when I've thought a piece of work was done, and and so I've looked at it again and decided to add together more elements to it in order to make it stronger. Given my technique, I can't erase anything; all elements need to exist added and this is the biggest challenge.

JAH Your discovery of pre-Columbian art is office of a process of reflection. While you were going through it, did you consider the problem of having to communicate the emotion that you mentioned previously by ways of a language unrelated to European Surrealism?

GG Yeah, definitely. I all the same remember when I started considering this. It was in 5 Reyna Street, hither in the neighborhood of San Affections. One day, I didn't know what to paint and I told myself, I'll paint something related to this new emotional discovery.

JAH Do the works that you paint nowadays seek to communicate that same emotion?

GG Yes.

JAH Notwithstanding, there's been a formal transformation in your work.

GG Although my pictorial language has changed, I continue communicating that initial emotion. It's like when one plays the piano with 1 manus and then suddenly discovers the benefits of playing with both. I don't think I've discovered anything emotionally new in what I'm doing. The emotion has remained the same. I discovered, later psychoanalytical therapy, that all my paintings constitute a blazon of evocation and, at the same time, a true-blue portrait of my psyche. I was very interested in psychoanalysis and therefore was able to speak about who I was. I discovered many interesting things that I had put into my work without even noticing. I paint; I don't care what my paintings stand for—my emotional affair appears in them. That happens without me having to worry about it, because when I'm painting I only pay attention to technical issues. In other words, I only worry virtually what I have to put in at a specific place, or if I'll use blue or red. Who one is and what ends up being distinctive about i's piece of work happens by itself, spontaneously.

JAH Does the process of adding and subtracting while you're working on a piece have to do with this emotion, with the feeling that the painting has a life of its own?

GG The process makes the artist become a type of Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein knew when he had arrived at the "consummation of his toils." I can't remember what happens in the novel. In the movie there are all sorts of spectacular effects: electrical machines, thunder, etcetera. The same happens in painting. The minute thunder rolls, that last thunder that bestows life on the slice, one says, "It's done!" From then on painting and painter are separated, and the painting has a life of its own. Some will say, "It'south horrible!" And others volition say, "It'due south beautiful!" Ane is not in charge of that.

Gunther Gerzso,Contrary Dimension, 1998, oil on lath, 59.7 × 72.4 cm.

JAH From 1946 on, your paintings have changed significantly in terms of their colour and formal language. Could you describe this procedure, and why you chose this path?

GG The development of any creative person's body of work is both changing and constant. It begins with the get-go painting, which ever contains the same elements that all the other paintings have. Then one is able to identify the pictorial elements that relate merely to the painting itself, so the work starts irresolute. I recall the same happens in compages. It'south clear that many changes have taken place from the Parthenon to Le Corbusier's Maison-Domino. Still nosotros could say that the ii buildings take walls and a ceiling; one is surrounded by columns, and the other incorporates them in a dissimilar way. If I could alive some other two hundred years, I'one thousand quite certain that I would find the manner to create other images and their emotional content would still be the aforementioned.

JAH Why do you think that the emotional content is the same? Don't yous retrieve at that place's a link between the painting'south content and its technique?

GG I've never worried about the emotional content because it happens by itself. To me, "emotional content" is a type of container within me, i that I have to feed in the aforementioned way a automobile needs gas. Emotions don't nurture themselves; they need educational activity and culture then they don't perish. I nurture them by looking, and not but at pre-Columbian art. Anyone tin can find "nutrient" by reading poetry or looking at plants, mural, colour and the works of masters throughout time. The last time I was in Paris I saw the Egyptian sculpture, Seated Scribe, and felt its emotional impact.

When I was working in films I felt that I wasn't nurturing myself at all. One day I bitterly complained to Luis Buñuel while nosotros were working on a film together. I said, "I can't stand up this anymore, I'm writing stories with writers and producers simply because money needs to be made." And he replied, "Gunther, my friend, don't worry. These films are nutritious." And he was right, considering thanks to that job I was able to paint. And so nosotros movement on to a different problem: the economical one. Artists need to make a living.

JAH Is in that location a close relationship between emotion and the process of making a painting?

GG Yep. For me the actual making of a piece is very of import. It's a dangerous issue because one can make a technically impeccable piece that is totally devoid of content, that says zero at all. The problem is precisely to infuse emotion into the technique. It'south similar playing the piano. If you listen to Claudio Arrau it's very unlike from hearing your aficionado neighbor interpret the same piece of music.

JAH Therefore you tin distinguish the technique, the vehicle of expression from the emotion.

GG Emotional content and technique accept a very detail relationship. One has to honey technique. It's a marvelous experience for me to read catalogs of painting materials. I read them every bit if they were novels. It's a type of masochistic activity for me because I can't possibly buy all that they offer. I read a magazine called American Creative person and some other called The Artist. The readers of those journals pigment watercolors of the sea, sunsets, or Native American chiefs riding horses. In the pages of those magazines their techniques are described. There are more painters of this kind than whatever other. At that place are so many people who have the right emotion just don't know how to transmit it, put it in words or express it in whatever other fashion.

JAH In other words, at that place's a constant refinement of the means of expression—that is, the accent on technique—on the 1 side, and on the other there'due south an awareness of an emotion that has to be nurtured and also successfully conveyed.

GG In order to achieve emotional development, an education in the arts is essential. It has to be caused at some point in one's life. When I was 12 I was sent to Europe; I was meant to get an art dealer, a marchand de tableaux, considering my female parent's brother was one. I call back I wanted to be an engineer at that time, but I was put in a house chock with incredible artworks. I learned what quality is: a skillful painter is able to communicate an emotion through very banal means, a piece of cloth and a lilliputian earth combined with enamel and oil.

JAH How did the formal transformation in your piece of work take place? Did it happen abruptly or past means of a procedure of subtraction? I say this because it seems that your latest pieces are fragments of your earliest ones.

GG My paintings are definitely condign simpler. As of now I am fascinated by walls. There are walls that are very boring and then others that are very exciting. Now information technology'due south more difficult for me, because I tin can't fool myself anymore. Sometimes I'll make a cartoon and then say to myself, This is garbage and I can practice much ameliorate. I accept some stuff away from it, add other elements, and practice it once again. Information technology'due south a battle.

The paintings I did in 1946 were very baroque. I think it'southward a proficient thing. Tanguy went through the aforementioned process. His early works were very complicated, he put everything in. Later, everything gradually came into place. The same happened to Cézanne.

JAH Information technology as well reminds me of Miró. Isn't there also an abstraction process in your piece of work?

GG Yeah, but it'due south similar walking on a tightrope. Everything tin can fall apart if you aren't conscientious enough, considering you can't make full abstractions. In order to do that you would accept to be similar Mondrian and acquire that simplicity. The risk is that all of a sudden in that location's nothing left.

JAH Is there a larger distillation of emotion when in that location's more abstraction? Practice you think that at present you lot know what y'all want to transmit more than conspicuously than before?

GG My electric current work isn't as theatrical as it was in the past. Information technology's very like shooting fish in a barrel to put a lot into a painting. When you look at the works of the Bizarre masters, it's obvious that they knew when to stop. However, the bookish painters of the 1890s had an extraordinary ability to brand very superficial works, devoid of whatsoever emotion.

JAH Are you saying that one should eliminate the theatrical, and that what you were feeling in the 1940s was related to a certain theatricality?

GG Surrealism is very theatrical. Dalí is a great example. His early work was cute, but it had a lot of drama. At that place's also great theatrical content in Tintoretto, who made wonderful paintings. I'm non confronting theatricality, but Cubism, Mondrian and the Russians—Kandinsky, Malevich and others—just can't be ignored. One has to follow their path without imitating them. I don't think one can return to the Center Ages or get an academic painter present. It's like thinking about the British Gothic architecture of the 19th century. It lacked emotion and spirit.

Gunther Gerzso,Mansion Ancestral, 1949, oil on masonite, xiii⅜ × 19⅛ inches.

JAH Could you lot describe the process by which your paintings became more abstract and your colors and traces started changing?

GG With time I became more daring. When I began painting I wasn't every bit animated as I am at present. Today I use more reds than ever. The mode I began making cerise paintings is horrendously banal. A man in Washington wrote me a letter saying, "Enclosed you lot will find a sample of the red rug I'll accept in my office. Delight make a red painting for me." So I asked my wife, "Am I a prostitute or what?" I had never painted annihilation red earlier. So I worked on a red painting. Not the red the client wanted, simply a unlike 1 that he liked a lot. I've been making red paintings always since. That means that within me at that place was a vocalism that said, You can use red. As elementary as that.

JAH Yous are feeling an emotion and trying to convey it by some means, through, in your case, painting. Does this mean that equally you lot acquire how to use the medium, you learn what you lot can communicate through it? Is this how you could explicate your trend toward simplicity?

GG Yeah, definitely. Only on the edge, on the tightrope. The easiest affair in the earth is to paint some brushstrokes on a canvass. If you have some sort of skilful taste something always comes out, something decorative and perchance fifty-fifty more than. But that's walking on a path that has been paved before. It'south painting in the fashion of someone else, which is facile. But to exist able to do what Mondrian, Kandinsky or Rothko have done is extremely difficult.

JAH There's some other attribute of your work that is worth mentioning. Y'all're making big surfaces that look similar atmospheres, and are then interrupted past a line. My manner of interpreting this is to call back that the lines demarcate a place that's emphasized with the result of light around it. I'm under the impression that that is how y'all create tension between what nosotros perceive as an atmosphere, in the case of total surfaces, and what we perceive as a aeroplane, when there are lines. Am I right?

GG For me at that place'southward no plane. Since yesterday, I've been moving one of these lines around in a drawing. I detect these lines intuitively. They excite me considering they add a certain mystery and tension. The first time, I traced a line with a ruler and Bharat ink and felt similar something was missing. I put a sort of halo effectually it, which for me isn't lite; I only wanted to give it more visibility…and that's what it did…I tin can't describe it. I'm a painter, not a author.

Y'all talk virtually an atmosphere. For me it isn't that; it's a flat wall. This wall could have a dent, a metaphysical ane. Information technology'southward like the cracks I used to include in the paintings. The cleft is an inheritance of Surrealism, and as well a Romantic chemical element. The lines I utilize now are Surrealist in the sense that they're not logical or rational; to me they have a life of their own.

JAH Do you lot recall the life you are talking near is generated from the tension between what one expects rationally and what one is surprised by for its irrationality?

GG That crack or line does create tension in a apartment surface. That surface is non actually flat because it has a pictorial richness: pigments and many more colors than those that i perceives. I discovered that it was really interesting to add together lines to a painting.

JAH In other words, the line appeared ane twenty-four hours and had an result similar to that which cracks had in Surrealist paintings?

GG A crack has depth—and I didn't accept that idea from pre-Columbian fine art. To me a straight line is never a fissure.

JAH Not fifty-fifty in Kandinsky?

GG Curiously enough, I don't similar Kandinsky. I feel his paintings lack a metaphysical, emotional quality. But I do like Albers a lot, in whose work there's no line or annihilation, merely a few square shapes. I like his piece of work because it contains a lot of emotion. In my bedroom I have a lithograph by him that he gave to me; information technology'due south in orange tones. I was living here in San Angel, and ane day my neighbor, an American painter, said to me, "A very nice man came to meet me, his name is Albers. I told him you painted." I was working in film then; information technology was during the state of war. Albers was very old. He came to see my work and said, "Immature man, why don't yous forget the idea of becoming an old master?" I used to paint "in the manner of." And in a certain way I still do.

Albers used to paint the following way: he would squeeze a tube and so spread the colour on the canvas with a spatula. He never mixed colors. He'd be working on a unmarried pattern that he could repeat 50 times. He did cute things and was incredibly polite. I don't have much to do with his world but I admire him a lot. His piece of work reaches me. Compared to Albers, I'm notwithstanding doing theater and set design, opera.

I was trained to focus on the painting's matter. This is very of import to me. That's what I hateful when I say I'chiliad a smashing admirer of Bonnard, who is an artist that does things diametrically opposed to what I practice. If yous paint a still life, for case, with four apples, a newspaper and a pipage, similar many painters did, it'south not better or worse because of the four apples, paper and pipe. Information technology's about the emotion behind information technology, its pictorial quality and the magic of the surface.

Gunther Gerzso,Southern Queen, 1963, oil on masonite, eighteen⅛ × 24 inches.

JAH So the private and the emotion that he's able to contain into his own work are at play again. With regards to this, doesn't a slice lose some of its emotional charge when information technology incorporates elements that don't come from the writer's imagination, merely from other times and other artists?

GG In that location's no artwork that'due south not based on other works. For example, in the Chapel at Ronchamp, Le Corbusier fabricated his apple in a very different and impressive way. When I visited the chapel I wasn't expecting anything. I knew Le Corbusier was Protestant, strong, Swiss, and an atheist. I wondered what spirituality could take meant to him. Once I saw the chapel information technology became very clear to me that he knew what mysticism was. And the stained glass there! He didn't invent anything when he worked on stained glass, but what a thing he was able to practice! They're unique. He was able to give that church something that few architects have been able to give it since. A religious or mystical person comes into that chapel and everything is in its place, although Le Corbusier scarcely used traditional elements.

JAH What I'm referring to is that a certain originality, a unique dimension, needs to exist in gild to express a particular emotion. If equally an artist y'all utilize what belongs to others, isn't some of the emotional power lost?

GG The quest for originality per se is very dangerous. The initial issue can be dazzling, but it doesn't remain that way for long. Good artworks have a sort of battery in them, to put it one style. At that place are many works that take had touch at first, only their batteries expire speedily. Then the piece becomes an empty object, it stops existence an artwork. When I get to Europe and visit museums, I go to encounter the same works that I've been impressed past in the past. Every time I'1000 in Venice I see The Phenomenon of the Slavepast Tintoretto, and I rediscover that he did a marvelous thing. His battery has never expired. There are a lot of marvels, but yous take to possess the ability to marvel at things.

JAH How would y'all describe the process by which y'all decide that a painting is finished or that a composition is the adequate 1?

GG I trace a rectangle with two diagonals that give structure to the space, that's how I demarcate the composition. It's different from what Bonnard used to do. He would accept a sail with him to the cheap hotel he'd go to with his married woman. She would bathe and come out of the bathroom. And then he'd start painting. One time he was done he would evaluate the painting, sometimes he would cutting 12 inches off the side of the canvas in gild to finish the composition. Composition is everything for me; only it tin can lead me to a dead stop in which everything falls apart. Regardless, one has to chance more and more until reaching the point where if one continues everything will crumble, everything that was made visible will disappear.

JAH Let's say that's merely intuitive. Nevertheless, after xl years of painting, an interior dialogue and a reflection about what works and what doesn't must take place in your listen, don't yous think?

GG No. The day after I've finished something I'm able to see what works and what doesn't at a single glance. Sometimes I realize I don't know the solution to the problem and then I leave it. To do this is similar to creating a living being. Sometimes i can see information technology's missing a manus, an eye. Before, I used to think, Well, information technology's done even if it lacks a hand or an eye. With time one places those missing parts. It is intuitive.

JAH But when something does piece of work, don't you question yourself well-nigh what that is?

GG Experience has made me reflect well-nigh my own work, only I'chiliad non very interested in this. When I see one of my paintings I feel that it's alive and volition survive exterior of the studio. When I visited Gelman's exhibition and saw my own paintings, I felt as if someone else had painted them. Some looked better than others, some needed a amend technique.

JAH What you are saying is that fifty-fifty when there is a rational or intellectual process involved in painting, the 1 that ultimately matters the most is the intuitive one. And not but that, but also that your intuition can change through fourth dimension.

GG Yes. Look, one time I made a painting titled The Woman of the Jungle. I first fabricated a lithograph and it didn't come up out very well. Then I fabricated a painting and information technology came out fine. Then I fabricated some other lithograph of it. All this in a catamenia of 20 years. The cartoon was the exact aforementioned one; what inverse was the way I fabricated it. In the end, the piece was able to express its emotional content in a much stronger way. But the charge was there from the starting time. I'yard trying to express a totally irrational matter in the almost rational way—that's why I'1000 yet a Surrealist.

Translated from the Spanish by Mónica de la Torre.

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Source: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/gunther-gerzso/

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