
La Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City)
<p>Born in Mexico to a Hungarian-German-Jewish family, Gunther Gerzso spent his earliest years in Mexico and Switzerland. His intricate abstract works, like <em>Lost City</em>, 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?”</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1948
- Medium
- Oil on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 55.9 × 71.5 cm (22 × 28 1/8 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Gunther Gerzso
Artist

Painting
Gunther Gerzso was a Mexican painter who developed a distinctive abstract visual language rooted in Pre-Columbian and modernist forms. Working primarily in oil on canvas, he combined geometric abstraction with archaeological reference, creating compositions that suggest both architectural space and ancient ritual objects. His work occupied a unique position within postwar Latin American modernism, neither purely geometric nor overtly figurative. Gerzso's layered color fields and interlocking planes established him as a defining figure in Mexican abstract painting from the 1950s onward.
Full artist profile →More
More by Gunther Gerzso
Syn, from México Nueve
1984 · Color lithograph on paper
Imago, from México Nueve
1984 · Color lithograph on paper
Tataniuh's House (La Caasa de Tataniuh) from Actualidad Gráfica-Panorama Artístico
1978 · Screenprint with chine collé additions
Towards the Unknown
1950 · Oil on hardboard
Estela
1947 · Oil on hardboard
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Gunther Gerzso
- Year
- 1948
- Medium
- Oil on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 55.9 × 71.5 cm (22 × 28 1/8 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1948-014969
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified




