This research project concerns the work of Gego (1912–1994) who arrived in Caracas in 1939 and became a prominent local artist in the sixties. In recent years her work has transcended this local context and she has emerged as a key contributor to the art of the period. Her radical recasting of the modern sculptural project, as it was received in her adopted country, via a productive engagement with architecture, crafts, and design pedagogy, throws new light on the dissolution of boundaries that traditional mediums such as painting, drawing, and sculpture underwent internationally during this active period of experimentation. This study intends to develop a monographic approach to Gego's work while exploring the unique texture of avant-garde culture in a developing urban metropolis such as Caracas. The latter produced distinctive cultural models shaped by the transnational dialogue between Europe and the Americas that Gego exemplifies.

Monica Amor is professor of modern and contemporary art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has written art criticism and essays for 4Columns, Art Margins, Artforum, Art Journal, Grey Room, October, Third Text, and others. She has curated several exhibitions, among them: Beyond the Document for the Reina Sofia in Madrid (2000), re-drawing the line for Art in General in New York (2000), Gego: Defying Structures for the Serralves Foundation in Porto (2006), and Mexico: Expected/Unexpected for Le Maison Rouge in Paris (2008). She has lectured extensively, nationally and internationally, with special attention to interdisciplinary practices and the dynamics of global modernity. Amor is the author of Theories of the Non-object: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela 1944–1969 (University of California Press, 2016). She holds a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.