Born in Bratislava and marked by a long life journey, Gruber found her place of residence in Mexico. After her time in Monterrey, the artist moved to Mérida, where she has created for more than three decades in deep dialogue with the local nature. The exhibition, composed of 200 pieces, reflects her material and conceptual explorations with clay, bronze, glass, stone or natural fibers, and shows an artistic process in constant transformation. This exhibition is also a tribute to a life dedicated to art as a form of search, refuge and essential expression of the human experience.

The forms of vegetal matter, topographic markings, or the curves of the human body coexist in the same space: the sculptural projects of Gerda Gruber.

Born in Bratislava—today the capital of Slovakia—the artist arrived in Mexico in 1975. She spent her childhood in Austria, where she studied art with a specialization in sculpture. From an early age, she intended to come to Mexico, little imagining that she would take root here and find her refuge. With Mexico already inscribed in her landscape, Gerda discovered fertile ground to pursue a rigorous artistic discipline, constantly evolving her language and never ceasing to observe the regenerative energy of nature. Thanks to what unfolded in her first years in Mexico, her practice remained open to tirelessly exploring new materials and techniques. At the same time, her invaluable vision in the field of art education defined a life dynamic that intertwined with the task of establishing entry points for new participants in the realms of art and creativity.

Gerda’s exchange with Monterrey began in 1977; she initially arrived to develop the Workshop of Experimentation with Regiomontano Ceramics, which emerged mainly as a consequence of the city’s booming industrial scene, while also providing support to the contemporary art field, impacting both artists and workers from certain companies. Having already founded the clay sculpture workshop at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City in 1976, in Monterrey she put into practice her capacity to weave encounters between materials and techniques: porcelain modeling combined with wood or refractory clay, bronze casting, and stone inlay, walnut wood carving, as well as manipulating and welding steel or blown glass, alongside industries that recognized her in the effort to expand the horizons of production mutually.

Gerda Gruber: Between Green and Water is an attempt to unfold a fragment of her production, just as it was nurtured by the Monterrey landscape over nearly twenty years of continuous exchanges, and just as it is absorbed today by the rocky terrain of southeastern Mexico. A trajectory of inspiration, shaped by constant displacement and adaptation, now settles into place as the result of creative freedom in processes that allow us to profoundly reconsider that nature, as a source of life, is already a refuge in itself.

Since 1988, Gerda has lived in Yucatán. Perhaps today it is inevitable to situate her work within contemporary thematic categories such as climate or the environment, although the truth is that her interest has been genuine and constant, driven by the passion of learning from the sensitivity born of natural transformation; therefore, she explores the function of sculpture from the standpoint of evolution. In Yucatán, her creative process is deliberately exposed to the dry scrubland where the intensity of heat and humidity pervades everything, such that some of her sculptures have naturally followed the organic principle of metamorphosis.

Curated by: Daniela Pérez