La Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City)

Description

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?”

Provenance

The artist; sold through Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City, to Muriel Kallis Newman, Chicago, 1950 [Mendelsohn 2000, p. 6n1; email from Mary-Anne Martin, in curatorial object file]; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, November 26, 1980.

La Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City)

Gunther Gerzso

1948

Accession Number

60257

Medium

Oil on hardboard

Dimensions

55.9 × 71.5 cm (22 × 28 1/8 in.)

Classification

painting

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman