Gunther Gerszo - mexican artist

Gunther Gerzso Wendland (June 17, 1915 - April 21, 2000) was a Mexican artist and theater/film set and costume designer. Although comparatively unknown outside the art cognoscenti, is viewed by some critics as similar to Pablo Picasso and Joaquin Torres Garcia. He is “one of the best Latin American painters,” according to Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize-winning Mexican author.

Born in Mexico City, Gerzso’s father, Oscar, was a watchmaker from Budapest, Hungary; his mother, Dore Wendland, a lead singer and a pianist from Berlin, Germany. His father died just six months after he was born. His mother then married another emigrant, the German owner of a well-liked jewelry store. He lost his business during the Mexican Revolution, and in 1922 the family moved to Europe.

In 1924 they returned to Mexico. After his mother divorced her second husband, during her subsequent financial uncertainty she decided to send Gunther, then 12, to live with her brother, Hans Wendland, an important art historian and dealer in Lugano, Switzerland. Wendland sold works by Rembrandt, Cézanne, and Titian, and Gerzso recalled paintings by Bonnard and Delacroix on the walls of his bedroom. Among the important visitors of the Wendland’s was Nando Tamberlani, an Italian stage set designer who became friends with Gerszo while living on the estate for a summer.

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