Gunther Gerzso Reception Announcement, VG SC Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art New York 1984

Ashton, Dore. New York, Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art, 1984. 

English Language, Very Good, SC, 8vo, 9" x 9", Unpaginated 6 pp.

Stiff white staplebound wrappers, grey lettering to front and back panels, covers foxed, edges sunned and toned, bumping to spines and edges, else clean, intact and otherwise unmarked. Gunther Gerzso's 1984 oil painting Ocre-verde-azul to front. Approximately 6 pp. including one full-color image of Gerzso's 1982 oil painting Naranja-verde-azul alongside an essay by celebrated writer, professor and art critic, Dore Ashton. The essay is dedicated to the memory of noted Argentinian writer and art critic, Marta Traba, who died in a plane crash six months earlier. Also includes a short biography of Gunther Gerzso, for whom this announcement was produced, on the occasion of his first New York exhibition and to present the new monograph of his work, published by Editions du Griffon, Neuchatel. Gerzso was a Mexican painter, designer, and screenwriter. With origins in set design and play writing across Europe and the United States, Gerzso began to embrace painting in the early 1930s. He eventually joined the surrealists living in Mexico including Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo before finding greater renown as an abstract painter paying homage in color fields to Mayan and Aztec architecture. With regard to Gerzso as an abstract surrealist, Ashton writes, "The cracked, window-like shape has existed in many of Gerzso's paintings...and can be compared to other shapes in his paintings in which there is a deliberate slashing rent - symbol of broken idols, shattered monuments, archaic memories of separation and even death." The reception was held the evening of May 30, 1984 with the exhibition running May 24th - June 27th , 1984. From the collection of historian Whitney Chadwick and artist Robert Bechtle.