Bichito 89/32

‘With an amazing aptitude for drawing and a subtle and ironic spirit, Gego creates work based on the use of a unique, primary and minimal element: the line.’

PERUGA, Iris: ‘El juego de crear’, in Gego. Desafiando estructuras. Barcelona/Porto: MACBA / Museu Serralves, 2006.

At a later stage in her career, between 1987 and 1989, Gego produced a series of small sculptures that she called Bichitos. Years earlier, the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark had produced her famous Bichos, small and simple constructions made of hinged metal plates that require the manipulation of the viewer – hence their organic or animalistic character. In Gego’s case, although on other occasions she had already used the word bicho to refer to the whole of her sculptural work, the diminutive Bichitos alludes to pieces made with scrap materials, industrial elements or remains of works from earlier periods, with which she composed small volumes with a precarious system of construction: from the most elementary, such as a knot of wire mesh, to others that took the form of an assemblage of small industrial and everyday elements. With their surprising forms, some appear as surreal figures while others are almost formless.

Although in the Spanish context the word bicho means bug, in Venezuela it is also a colloquial interjection of rejection and disorder, the word bichero being applied to groups of diverse animals or heterogeneous objects. The fact that Gego referred to her work in these terms demonstrates her desire to avoid conventional terminology related to sculpture and the fine arts.