1948
Gunther Gerzso Mexican, 1915–2000
Mexico
Born in Mexico to a Hungarian-German-Jewish family, Gunther Gerzso spent his earliest years in Mexico and Switzerland. His intricate abstract works, like Lost City, show the dueling influences of European Cubism and Pre-Columbian art. Of his interest in ancient indigenous objects he once said, “I guess this could sound ridiculous because my mother was German and my father Hungarian. What did I have to do with Pre-Columbian art? And yet I was attracted to it in a tremendously emotional way….I can’t explain it: I felt that I had something in common with the artists who had created these objects. And I also told myself, I live in Mexico….Why don’t I make something that belongs to this country?”
Oil on hardboard