You can’t go past Liz Gehrers sculptures without noticing them.
I nearly would have succeeded when I first came across them in the studio of the Gehrer house in Tuscany, Italy. I was once again on a visit and had expressed the wish to be allowed to see some pieces of Liz Gehrers work. I was curious.
I knew the sophisticated sense of beauty and perfection, which the outside and inside of the Gehrer country home in Montepulciano seems to breathe, on a par with the hospitality of its inhabitants. I knew Liz Gehrer whose subdued elegance rivals her natural charm when, certain of herself, briefly and clearly she cuts in on the murmur of a conversation, puts in her point of view next to that of her husband or settles a verbal quarrel of her children with a smile and sense of humour.
I was therefore not without prejudice about the artistic significance of her creative work. «Who did this?», I had nearly asked, as her husband pointed to a sculpture which at first sight seemed like a kind of metal relief, bronze for example, but on closer examination turned out to be a cardboard structure in which human silhouettes could be recognised. I had expected graphically structured works of beauty and elegance, works of aesthetic perfection and compositional austerity. Instead larger-than-life, face- and limbless figures made of hardened cardboard or grey concrete. The first-mentioned made for the inside, alone or in formation, the latter preferably standing outside together in groups of two or three and robbing the garden of its innocent charm.
My first inner reaction was dismay, hit by a reality not defined for the time being, thrown out of the course of daily routine, stumbling onto the path of an inescapable reality. In the meantime I have had the chance to circle, encircle, to approach Liz Gehrers works in silent dialogue: a pair of figures, last summer found its way into the midst of the olive grove in Celidonia.
I perceive: oversized, overly slim human silhouettes, each one stiffly wrapped, walled in, frozen. They have no face, no arms, no legs. They could be silent memorials of modern terror and still don’t let such thoughts crop up. Because in all their stiffness they are alive, look at you and each other without having eyes, step into a rhythmic relationship which can well become a dance as you walk around them.
What do they represent to me? They stand for the tragedy of the human existence which is only conceivable in community, but can be lived solely in segregation. For the distinctive ability of man to communicate in spite of the fact that in life’s dance, in the end he will always remain without face, voiceless and untouchable, except perhaps for those rare moments in which the ice melts, the armour cracks, the wrapping falls. For a time in which we stand in the midst of the blossoming garden, mute and dull, without sense of direction, without arms, helplessly dancing our lonely dance.
In those days in Liz Gehrers studio I had drawn her attention to the very fine cracks which could only be noticed on close examination of her first concrete sculptures and said that it might be wise not to expose them to the elements or at least to protect them by means of synthetic materials. «No», she replied. «If they disintegrate in rain, cold and ice then that’s all right. I’m curious about what will happen to them over the next years.» Will they one day become similes of human transience?
Paul O.Pfister, Publicist, Chiusdino (Tuscany, Italy), January 1994 Paul O.Pfister has published several books, i.a. "Lob der Angst" (1994), "Die Rotonde von Montesiepi" (1999), "Geworden" (2000) and "Furbi" (2001).