Gunther Gerzso

Last updated

Gunther Gerzso (June 17, 1915 – April 21, 2000) was a Mexican painter, designer and director and screenwriter for film and theatre.

Contents

Biography

Gerzso was born in Mexico City, [1] in the times of the Revolution. His parents were Oscar Gerzso (Hungarian : Gerzsó Oszkár), a Hungarian immigrant, and Dore Wendland, German by birth. After his father's death a few months after Gunther was born, his mother married a German jeweler. 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,[ citation needed ] she sent Gunther to Lugano, Switzerland to live with his uncle Dr. Hans Wendland, who was an influential name in the art world. [1] Gunther, then a teenager, met Paul Klee [1] and lived among his uncle's collection of paintings which included works by Pierre Bonnard, Rembrandt, Paul Cézanne, Eugène Delacroix and Titian. During his time in Lugano, he also met Nando Tamberlani, [1] noted set designer who would introduce him to the world of theater.

In 1931, due to the impact of the Great Depression in Europe, Dr. Wendland sent the boy back to his mother in Mexico City. Back home he started doing sketches for set designs and writing plays influenced by Mr. Tamberlani. Two years later he started working in a local theater production company run by Fernando Wagner. [1] In 1935 he was offered a scholarship to study at the Cleveland Play House where he made more than 50 set designs over the course of four years. During the 1940s and '50s he made various set designs for Mexican, French and American films. He won a total of five Premios Ariel (The Mexican Equivalent of the Oscars) for Best Production Design as well as two more honorary Ariel Awards in 1994 and 2000. During this time he collaborated with directors like Emilio "El Indio" Fernández in Un Día de Vida (1950), Luis Buñuel in Susana (1951), Una Mujer sin Amor (1952) and El rio y la muerte (1955), Yves Allégret in Les Orgueilleux (1953), and John Huston in Under the Volcano (1984).

In the late 1930s Gerzso 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. 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 Péret, 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.

According to Octavio Paz, Gunther Gerzso was one of the greatest Latin American painters, since it was he, along with Carlos Mérida and Rufino Tamayo, who opposed the ideologist aesthetic movement into which muralism had degenerated.

Gunther Gerzso was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 [1] and later in 1978 he was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Bellas Artes. Gunther Gerzso died on April 21, 2000.

Selected filmography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salvador Dalí</span> Spanish surrealist artist (1904–1989)

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol, known as Salvador Dalí, was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remedios Varo</span> Spanish artist (1908–1963)

María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was a Spanish surrealist painter working in Spain, France, and Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfgang Paalen</span> Austrian-Mexican artist (1905–1959)

Wolfgang Robert Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter, sculptor, and art philosopher. A member of the Abstraction-Création group from 1934 to 1935, he joined the influential Surrealist movement in 1935 and was one of its prominent exponents until 1942. Whilst in exile in Mexico, he founded his own counter-surrealist art-magazine DYN, in which he summarized his critical attitude towards radical subjectivism and Freudo-Marxism in Surrealism with his philosophy of contingency. He rejoined the group between 1951 and 1954, during his sojourn in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Álvarez Bravo</span> Mexican photographer

Manuel Álvarez Bravo was a Mexican artistic photographer and one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography. He was born and raised in Mexico City. While he took art classes at the Academy of San Carlos, his photography is self-taught. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with its artistic peak between the 1920s and 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or Surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. He rejected the picturesque, employing elements to avoid stereotyping. He had numerous exhibitions of his work, worked in the Mexican cinema and established Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house. He won numerous awards for his work, mostly after 1970. His work was recognized by the UNESCO Memory of the World registry in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constructivism (art)</span> Artistic and architectural philosophy originating in Russia

Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected decorative stylization in favour of the industrial assemblage of materials. Constructivists were in favour of art for propaganda and social purposes, and were associated with Soviet socialism, the Bolsheviks and the Russian avant-garde.

Alexander Phillips was a Canadian-Mexican cinematographer. He worked on over 200 films, most of them during the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Throughout his career, he was nominated 14 times for an Ariel Award for Best Cinematography which he won twice for En La Palma de Tu Mano and Untouched.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonora Carrington</span> British-Mexican artist, surrealist painter and novelist (1917–2011)

Mary Leonora Carrington was a British-born, naturalized Mexican surrealist painter and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pedro Friedeberg</span> Mexican artist and designer

Pedro Friedeberg is a Mexican artist and designer known for his surrealist work filled with lines colors and ancient and religious symbols. His best known piece is the “Hand-Chair” a sculpture/chair designed for people to sit on the palm, using the fingers as back and arm rests. Friedeberg began studying as an architect but did not complete his studies as he began to draw designs against the conventional forms of the 1950s and even completely implausible ones such as houses with artichoke roofs. However, his work caught the attention of artist Mathias Goeritz who encouraged him to continue as an artist. Friedeberg became part of a group of surrealist artists in Mexico which included Leonora Carrington and Alice Rahon, who were irreverent, rejecting the social and political art which was dominant at the time. Friedeberg has had a lifelong reputation for being eccentric, and states that art is dead because nothing new is being produced.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mathias Goeritz</span> Mexican artist (1915–1990)

Werner Mathias Goeritz Brunner was a Mexican painter and sculptor of German origin. After spending much of the 1940s in North Africa and Spain, he and his wife, photographer Marianne Gast, immigrated to Mexico in 1949.

Antonio Saura Atarés was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-war painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is often remembered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Felguérez</span> Mexican artist (1928–2020)

Manuel Felguérez Barra was a Mexican abstract artist, part of the Generación de la Ruptura that broke with the muralist movement of Diego Rivera and others in the mid 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Giménez Cacho</span> Mexican actor

Daniel Giménez Cacho is a Spanish-born Mexican actor. He is known for portraying Tito the Coroner in Cronos (1993) and We Are What We Are (2010).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Rahon</span> French-born Mexican painter and writer (1904–1987)

Alice Phillipot (Alice Rahon) (8 June 1904 – September 1987) was a French-born Mexican poet and artist whose work contributed to the beginning of abstract expression in Mexico. She began as a surrealist poet in Europe but began painting in Mexico. She was a prolific artist from the late 1940s to the 1960s, exhibiting frequently in Mexico and the United States, with a wide circle of friends in these two countries. Her work remained tied to surrealism but was also innovative, including abstract elements and the use of techniques such as sgraffito and the use of sand for texture. She became isolated in her later life due to health issues.

Carlos Orozco Romero was a Mexican cartoonist and painter who co-founded several cultural institutions in Mexico, including the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda". His work was recognized with membership in the Academia de Artes and the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, and in 1980, with Mexico's Premio Nacional de Arte.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Ruíz (painter)</span>

Antonio M. Ruíz, was a Mexican fine art painter and scenic designer otherwise known by his childhood nickname "El Corzo" or "El Corcito" (diminutive) which came about due to his resemblance to a popular Spanish bullfighter or torero.

Jorge R. Camacho Lazo was a Cuban painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women surrealists</span> Women involved with the Surrealist movement

Women Surrealists are women artists, photographers, filmmakers and authors connected with the surrealist movement, which began in the early 1920s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generación de la Ruptura</span>

Generación de la Ruptura is the name given by art critic Teresa del Conde to the generation of Mexican artists against the established Mexican School of Painting, more commonly called Mexican muralism post World War II. It began with the criticisms of José Luis Cuevas in the early 1950s, followed by others who thought the established art had become dogmatic, formulaic and nationalistic and the artists too deferential to the government. This new generation of artists was not bound by a particular artistic style but was more interested in personal rather than social issues and influenced by a number of international trends in art such as Abstract expressionism. Early reaction to them was strong and negative but by the end of the 1950s, they had succeeded in having their art shown in the major venues of Mexico. The Generación de la Ruptura had influence on other arts in Mexico, such as literature but it did not end the production of murals in Mexico with social and nationalist purposes.

Guillermo Meza Álvarez was a Mexican painter, known for his oils depicting fantastic background and often distorted human figures, generally with denunciations of society. He was born to a Tlaxcalteca indigenous father of modest means, but his parents had interest in the arts, history and literature. Meza showed interest in art and music in his youth, studying painting with Santos Balmori. Later, he approached Diego Rivera to look for an apprenticeship, but instead, the painter recommended him to the prestigious Galería de Arte Mexicana, which helped him develop as an artist as well as promoted his work for twenty years. Meza won various awards for his work during his career and was also granted membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

José Reyes Meza was a Mexican painter, costume and set designer, who helped to found a number of cultural institutions in Mexico. Reyes Meza began his artistic career principally in theater, although he was an active painter and even bullfighter in his early days. Painting became prominent starting in the 1970s, working on murals in various parts of Mexico as well as exhibiting canvas works in Mexico and abroad. The artist is a founding member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and his work has been acknowledged by tributes, various awards and an art museum in Nuevo Laredo named after him.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kristin G. Congdon; Kara Kelley Hallmark (30 October 2002). Artists from Latin American cultures: a biographical dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 88. ISBN   978-0-313-31544-2 . Retrieved 18 March 2012.