| To an exemplary artist and not less exemplary
friend, I wish you many more years in order to
continue enjoying your art and your friendship. |
| René Solís Mexico,
September 7, 1995 |
| Gunther is a genius, a giant of the
imagination. Gunther sees the layers of which our
world is made. He didn't ask that the world be
complicated and that every perception and
articulation be compounded with the world's
intricacy, ambiguity and impermanence. But
knowing it is so, he gives nothing less to us
than his candor. |
| Hank Hine, Tampa, August 31,
1995 |
| ". . .I wonder whether if Andre Breton
had seen the totality of Gerzso's work he might
not have been forced to invent a new category of
Surrealism, as he had done in the 1940s in his
desire to bring Gorky's achievement into the
Surrealist fold, whether he might not have been
forced to acknowledge the ability of abstract art
to challenge our preconceptions of perceived
reality." |
John Golding, London, 1983,
quoted with permission of the author, September
1995 |
| For twenty-seven years Gunther Gerzso and I
have shared a friendship. My appreciation of him
comes from knowing the disquiet underlying his
art. But my great affection is from the heart. |
| Solomon Grimberg, Dallas,
August 21, 1995 |
| I have had the extraordinary privilege of
knowing Gunther and Gene since the inception of
his Octavio Paz collaboration. Through various
projects they resided in San Francisco for months
at a time. Their old world grace, razor sharp
wit, erudite minds and appreciation for all
things excellent made time spent with them some
of the happiest in my life. Their experiences and
their voracious desire to learn span three
continents, four languages and a circle of
remarkable people. To know them has been to
expand. |
| Dede Hine, Tampa, August 31,
1995 |
| The work of Gunther Gerzso pursues the
absolute purity of color and line; it astonishes
and captivates as only great painting can do. It
evokes the unique sense of beauty and harmony
which conforms to the universe. |
| Mariana Pérez Amor and
Alejandra Yturbe, Mexico, August 30, 1995 |
| I shall always be grateful to Gunther Gerzso
for opening my eyes to the pleasures of Mexico:
its beauty with his art, especially his
paintings, so full of vibrancy and mystery; its
charm expressed in his quirky sense of humor and
laconic irony; and, not least of all, its
culinary delights by introducing me to and
feeding me my-and probably his-first and only
repast of fried gusanos. |
| Ruth Ziegler, New York,
September 7, 1995 |
| With his unique style, the contribution that
Maestro Gunther Gerzso has made to contemporary
painting, establishes him as one of the most
solid figures of our time. To have had the honor
of working with him has been a great experience
in our career as editors and printers of graphic
work. Luis and Lea Rem ba, Los Angeles, August
24. 1995 I salute Gunther Gerzso on the occasion
of his 80th birthday exhibition. He has borne the
standard of excellence aloft for so long! He has
burned, as Pater would have said, with a gemlike
flame, kindled and rekindled over so many
decades, with absolute integrity. As he knows, I
regard him as an essential figure in the history
of Mexican painting whose impress will remain
always, I'm sure. |
| Dore Ashton, New York,
August 22, 1995 |
| Gunther, my friend: As I wish you a happy and
healthy 80th, I remember our early morning
conversations driving the bridge to the foundry
and the wonderful stories you told over breakfast
in the Korean coffee shop. I thank you for
letting me witness the births of Yaxchilán,
Tollan, Constelación, Semblantes. Come back
soon to San Francisco, the city you love. |
| George Belcher, San
Francisco, August 17, 1995 |
| When Gunther Gerzso was 55 years old of age I
wrote: |
| His visual language is
unmistakable: planes that suggest landscapes,
planes that suggest architectures, planes
thatsuggestmonuments, planes that suggest walls
of a dreamlike environment. His meticulous and
sensitive accumulation of planes transforms at
times into forests of resonating crys to Is,
where the eyes perceive whispers and humming. |
| Now that he has turned 80, I want to confirm
that perception I had then of an artist who has
known how to remain true to himself. |
| Raquel Tibol, Mexico, August
27, 1995 |
| In 1976 when I was curator for the exhibition
Gunther Gerzso: Paintings and Graphics
Reviewed the artist commented to me: |
| Churchill used to say that
when he went to Heaven he would dedicate the
first million years to painting to find out what
it was all about. And yes, it is true. One needs
as many as five lives and still the only
indispensable thing is constant work. |
| Almost two decades later one notes that
Gerzso, a perpetually young artist, has continued
to follow his artistic destiny. |
| Barbara Duncan, New York,
August 25, 1995 |
| Gerzso calls our attention to the presence in
his paintings of the dark backgrounds that are
the equivalent of the nothingness and the fear,
and the intimate relationship between this
nothingness and at times this death, with the
splendor of the surface that translates into the
metaphor of the wall or the body that traps his
mind. Body, wall, void: a labyrinth which he
constructs like a gallery of self-portraits, by
which the artist affirms that his works express
who he is and how the rest of the world appears
from his interior vision. That is to say, Gerzso
paints, as John Golding has said, the landscape
of the mind. Those landscapes are constructed
from sacred spaces, as if they were temples with
secret chambers, impenetrable ramparts which hide
the coveted center; but there are also wounded
citadels, elegant scars of an invulnerable
secrecy that gives up its mystery only to
vertigo. His painting is a house/body, a luminous
mantel in which is revealed a delicately
constructed world of opposites: order and
emotion, eros and death, ice and lava. There,
too, are his identities crossing this dark plane,
always behind the hermetic layers of color. |
| Rita Eder, Mexico, August
22,1995 |
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