Agora 1974

Gunther Gerzso's *Agora* is an oil painting in muted earth tones, punctuated by straight lines, with occasional accents of red, green and blue. I can imagine Gerzso in his studio, carefully laying down these colors, pushing and pulling them to find their place. It's like he's constructing a world, one plane at a time, not unlike the way he designed sets for theatre and film. The surface looks kind of sandy and coarse, like stucco almost, which adds a tactile dimension to the viewing experience. These geometrical forms are arranged in a way that feels both precise and intuitive. I wonder if he was thinking about architecture when he was making it, like he was building a stage set in the desert, or maybe ancient ruins baking in the sun. This piece has something in common with other mid-century abstractionists like Agnes Martin, yet Gerzso’s vision is distinctly his own. He seems to have taken the hard-edged vocabulary of geometric abstraction and infused it with a sense of depth, history, and human presence.