I was born in a country that no longer exists. Talk with Gerda Gruber
- nahomiximenez
- Jan 15, 2024
- 5 min read
2018
By Nahomi Ximenez
Gerda Gruber Jez settled in the late eighties in a place in Mexico that some jokingly call the Sister Republic of Yucatan, for Yucatan is so particular that it seems to be a country within a country rather than a State. She was born in the former Czechoslovakia but this has been her home for many years, and I remember something she told me about her adopted country: "what saves Mexico is the value of the family", I see that here she built one with his friends and students, she produces in her workshop and happily teaches at ESAY and at the Gruber Jez Foundation.
Award-winning artists work at ESAY who are art teachers with true vocation, as well as Gerda who is a member of the National System of Creators and head of the sculpture workshop at ESAY. I notice that students who arrive with many doubts, questions and uncertainties about their future in art at the end of working on their projects with her, have more clarity in their own practice of creation-research. Gruber is the oldest and most experienced of the Visual Arts teachers, it seems that being so active in teaching and creation fills her with energy. In 2001 she created the Gruber Jez Foundation, a non-profit oasis of nature, in which both support and advocate for the learning and creation of artwork.
Before there were art schools, there were artists and their disciples who were "adopted" and lived in their teachers' studios for years until they became teachers themselves. At the Gruber Jez Foundation something similar happens, since after completing the four years of the Visual Arts course, the graduates of the sculpture workshop continue to create in the workshop with Gerda, developing projects but now as colleagues, in an in-dependent manner in a space of dialogue in which they advise each other and many of them are also involved in teaching.
Four years of training in art are not enough, studying at a school is only the beginning of years of learning and for those who decide to continue learning at the Foundation, they talk about sculpture, which "has expanded so much that it has lost its limits", that is why Gerda prefers to talk about the third dimension rather than the action of sculpting.
I am working on a three-dimensional project with Gerda as my advisor, I am interested in people who like depth and she is one of those people. The following is a talk we had at the Foundation, where we talked about some aspects of her praxis as a teacher, the third dimension, philosophy, teamwork....
"When an art student is beginning their career, they needs to assimilate the theory that is being taught in class to be able to apply it to their work", to help in this process of recognition the teacher asks a series of questions that the student himself must answer.
"It is important that the idea and its materialization are linked so that the work does not remain visual. I look for the student to live his life in art, to analyze, to join, to merge."
At the beginning of a semester in the sculpture workshop, there are exercises that focus on practices in which research-creation is related. Cooking for example, is one of the exercises that makes this relationship "I think that cooking is like art... you eat it, digest it and leave it. The table is cleared and all the students eat together, they learn to research and work as a team, teamwork is an essential attitude to make sculpture, you almost always need help from another when you make sculpture, it is better to learn to help each other". Team cooking reminds me of an exercise that artist Sebastián Romo also does in his Atelier Romo. The exercise starts from gathering the money to do the shopping, planning the budget, thinking about the combination of food, organizing who does what... just like organizing an art project.
"I feel that my presence in the school as an artist and teacher has been in the ecological sense, to recognize the current problem and there is the con- sciousness involved in the process of nature. You have to observe, learn to see, because seeing is involved thinking. Rudolf Arnheim talks about this visual thinking and Pythagoras talks about constantly questioning, even if the answers are not given immediately." I see this clearly reflected in the concerns of those who were her students, they become more aware.
"I am the best student, because being a teacher I discover a world in each student and that teaches me, that's why I love teaching because I will never finish nurturing myself and others." A teacher who loves her job recognizes this reciprocal learning. He says that along the way he always comes across tools to teach, but he thinks that analyzing another artist's work is sometimes a mistake because there is something we don't know about them: their life. "In the life history of each person is a particular and unique philosophy of each individual, which is built with many things like experiences, the historical and geographical context in which it is, etc.. In the life of society there is much to learn, what interests me is to open a discussion about theosophy - conceptual and visual".
Philosophy = life.
The concept is the result of this philosophy, towards the visual.
"Along with philosophy, artists use their five or six senses to recognize their attitudes and understand how they apply them in their creative process. And we think about Marina Abramovic for example, what was her childhood like, when did she start making art, at what point did it click that made her want to do this? Our impulses occur because of emotion or circumstances, but everything is linked, those impulses must be analyzed and that is why research is important, to be able to structure and build our thoughts and emotions from the impulse to the visual".
Abramovic, a Serbian artist whose life was marked by the Orthodox Catholic Church and the Second World War, studied art and has been a teacher in Europe and the United States. She could have become a lawyer, a fashion designer or a bread seller, but she decided to become an artist and speak about her personal and common history through art, specifically performance art. Her work speaks of pain, dangers and emotional aftermath of war because she is part of that history that Europe lived through when countries like Czechoslovakia disappeared.
Gerda was born in the same decade as Abramovic and her life was also marked by that history of war. What is evident is that art education, from before the existence of schools until today, is nurtured when artists form artists, because they are the ones who can lead by example; they are not only artists, but also the ones who are able to teach.
"An artist must constantly interrupt the routine because routine is deadly", it is necessary to have experiences, not to repeat, in the repetition vices and depressions are formed. Sometimes I am a therapist, when a student arrives with interest, but has many doubts. Each person has information that comes from their experiences, so they already have a vision, but they have not yet discovered it. That is why it is important to awaken the individual and not the "cool entity that walks in the herd".
Think of those bohemian gatherings of artists, philosophers and poets discussing and finding ways to fix the world.
Gerda says that this "happens today, but in the workshop while dialoguing and working, each artist finds different ways of solving their own worlds, different ways of approaching the same problem". The meeting point and dynamics have changed, but the artists continue to draw from other artists.
At the Gruber Jez Foundation, young artists between the ages of twenty-something and seventy-something produce work.
By Nahomi Ximenez
2018
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