Gertrud Luise Goldschmidt (known also by the pseudonym Gego from 1932) was born in Hamburg on the 1August 1912 and studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, graduating in 1938. During her studies she undertook placements with a number of architectural firms in Hamburg and Stuttgart. 

 

In 1939, Goldschmidt arrived in Southampton, UK and worked temporarily for Bunce Court School in Kent. Later that year, living with her uncle in London, Goldschmidt contacted the RIBA Refugee Committee, asking to use RIBA’s library and stating that she wished to re-emigrate. By August, she had emigrated to Caracas, Venezuela, where she would remain for the rest of her life. 

 

On arriving in Venezuela, she was supported by the German Jewish Aid Committee and initially worked in a construction office. She then began designing furniture and lamps and occasionally undertook architectural design work for other exile architects. From the late 1940s, her architectural design work was particularly concerned with expressionist design.

 

Goldschmidt undertook a variety of teaching positions from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. Between 1958 and 1967 she held concurrent appointments at the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, at the Design Institute in Caracas and at the Escuela de Artes Plasticas, also in Caracas. From 1959 she worked increasingly on prints and sculpture in her own practice and became interested in plastic as a design material. She exhibited widely in this period, including in Munich, Bogotá, New York, Washington DC, as well as Caracas, and her works became part of numerous permanent collections in museums. She received the Tamarind Lithography fellowship in Los Angeles in 1966 and was awarded a number of state prizes for sculpture and design in Venezuela. 

 

Goldschmidt died in Caracas on the 17 September 1994. 

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FILES FROM THE REFUGEE COMMITTEE PAPERS WILL BE ADDED SOON.

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