Foreword

Mary-Anne Martin

Gunther Gerzso died on April 21, 2000, just short of his eighty-fifth birthday. This show, originally planned as a birthday gift, instead has become a memorial tribute. To say that he is gone is a sad thing. There are the obvious comforting words; we know that he abides in the hearts of those who knew him and that his art will live as long as there are souls who can identify a beautiful object and respond to its underlying secrets. Still, we would have liked to say good-bye. There was no time for that and so this exhibition will have to serve as our farewell. It is put together with affection and respect for a man we admired and loved. Many serious and, in some cases overdue, tributes to this great artist will follow in the next several years. A retrospective exhibition, a catalogue raisonné and numerous books are all in preparation. In the meantime we remember Gunther Gerzso in the pages that follow.

Thanks to all who helped us with this show: Gene Cady Gerzso who has been a great friend and faithful correspondent; Michael and Andrew Gerzso who have been generous with their time and moral support; Ambassador Jorge Pinto of the Mexican Consulate in New York, who agreed to lend a work from his private collection and to write for us a reminiscence of his visit to Gerzso’s studio; Alejandra Yturbe and Mariana Perez-Amor of the Galería de Arte Mexicano who found us catalogues of the earliest shows and gave us permission to reprint Wolfgang Paalen’s extraordinary essay of 1950; Professor Norman R. Shapiro of Wesleyan University who allowed us to reproduce his excellent translation of Baudelaire’s poem; Lotte Mendelsohn who sent me the tape of her 1981 radio interview with Gerzso and allowed me to transcribe and reproduce it here; Ramón López-Quiroga who opened his gallery to me and graciously allowed me to borrow some key early works; Thomasine Neight-Jacobs who informed me of the rich preserve of sketches and paintings from the Cleveland years that her father, Thomas Ireland, had kept and she had archived; Pierrette van Cleve who facilitated loans from the Ireland collection; Robert Littman who allowed me repeated visits to the storerooms of the Vergel Foundation where the Jacques and Natasha Gelman collection of Gerzsos is kept, and who generously provided me with the group of highly important works that form the nucleus of this show; Diana du Pont of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, who shares our passion; the private collectors who cheerfully agreed to part with favorite paintings in order to honor Gerzso’s memory; Charlotte Sherman for her persistence in our behalf; Sofia Lacayo who makes everything possible at mam/fa, Rosita Chalem who has immersed herself in Gerzso research for several months; Lynn Harrison Bump who designs our catalogues and website and who endures our foibles; and Ruth Kelley Martin who can spot a typo at twenty paces and keeps our commas where they belong. This catalogue is dedicated to you all.