Gego. Line as Object @ Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

In 1966, Gego gave a talk at the Tamarind Lithography workshop in California. In the draft for this, currently on display as part of a retrospective at the Henry Moore Institute, she wrote, ‘There is no danger for me to get stuck, because with each line I draw, hundreds more wait to be drawn.’ This indicates the fanaticism with which Gego engaged with the line from the 1950s until her death in 1994 – not as something to be drawn on paper, but as an ‘object to play with’.

Her aversion to line as a traditional draughtsman’s tool is clear from the first series we encounter Drawing without Paper. Gego began making these in 1976, incorporating leftover materials from her sculptural practice – steel and wire to ceramic lettered beads – creating wall-hanging structures. Continuing over 12 years, early works formally mimic a sheet of paper but soon break out of rectangular boundaries. The line as something to be released also appears in a concentration of works on paper throughout the Upper Sculpture Galleries. Among starkly beautiful lithographs and ink drawings, Autobiography of a Line (1965), an artist book anthropomorphises a line wresting liberation from the page. As well as being freed, Gego’s line lived, evident in the many small wire-based sculptures named ‘bichos’ (bug) or ‘bichitos’ (small bug). Looking at five such bichitos it is easy to imagine them as live creatures ready to scuttle away.

Seemingly resistant to classification, Gego also eschewed sculpture as a genre, stating ‘Sculpture, three-dimensional forms of solid materials. Never what I do!’ The more sculptural, using Gego’s definition, of the works here is her early Vibration in Black (1957), a dollop of thick black-painted aluminium lines swirling, connected and suspended from the ceiling. Although consisting of lines, their colour and thickness renders the work more substantial than those which dominate the exhibition: the Reticulárea (1975). These net-like structures made with interconnecting threads of wire and steel create organic forms, relating neatly to the concurrent display of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s teaching models. In archival images the linear sculptures really do seem like nets, with people interacting with them in a manner more in common with images of Palle Nielsen’s play environments than the discrete examples within this exhibition. Here, Reticulárea is hung like a tapestry rather than a net casts in many dimensions, judicious lighting casting layer upon layer of intricate shadowy lines and giving an illusion of depth. In the main gallery, grouped icosidodecahedrons float politely. Like the encased bichitos, there is something too still and serene about the presentation – the line as object instead of as a living and unpredictable entity. Other works seem to embody the latter notion more effectively: Reticulárea Wall Applique (1969) appears to literally grow out of the gallery walls.

With over 80 works, this show provides a good introduction to Gego’s practice through four decades, including remarkable late works of weaved photographs which demand close viewing. As the artist’s first solo show in the UK it is certainly worth a visit.