JO
GUNDRY

The industrial world

Text by Georges Peillex for the brochure published on the occasion of the opening of JO Gundry at the Galerie Zodiaque in Geneva in 1970.

The problem of expressing contemporary realities is the most pressing of all those that preoccupy today's artists. It is approached from all angles, with the most diverse means, and often the introduction of new materials, in an experimental research that is necessarily random, the least we can say is that it renounces painting.

Jo Gundry is no exception to the rule, but she intends to support the challenge while maintaining her full rights to an art form whose tradition, however old it may be, finds renewal in precisely such circumstances. Jo Gundry's spirit of our times places one of its essential incarnations in the industrial world, which cannot be denied as it imprints one of its most striking characters on our modern life for all the reasons we know.

Indeed, industry, directly or indirectly, conditions the existence of individuals in many areas and exerts a considerable influence on our environment. It is the main creative and driving power of our civilization, and we can see in the technology from which it cannot be dissociated, only a language, a true poetics. This is an obvious reality with which few artists have so far dared to measure themselves. In this respect, Jo Gundry is an original artist who approaches this theme with an enthusiasm justified by the multiple developments she knows how to give it in a creation where form and content are increasingly in harmony. A theme to which one could have said it was predestined, so much so that it fits her temperament and her very constructed style, strongly supported by rigorous lines of force, which emanates the spirit of the place even more than it evokes its appearances, and whose chromatic lyricism exalts and magnifies the apparently most austere objects. Thus, through her personal vision, the artist introduces us to the architectural and plastic beauty of factories, machinery, and a whole complicated and titanic universe created by the man for his emancipation.

Thus Jo Gundry ranks among the artists who, at all ages, have been messengers and revealing witnesses of the great philosophical and social currents of their time. At the same time, she lets us discover the fruitful outcome of years of research and work in a body of work that reaches the height of its power in a firm and generous maturity. It is not surprising, therefore, that her achievements have already met with the most favourable response from many industrialists. Among these expressions of interest is the commission he received for the project presented by the Swiss Federal Railways at the great European railways poster competition judged this October in Rome. It is not in vain to claim that Jo Gundry's career has reached a decisive turning point. There are vast prospects open to him.

GEORGES PEILLEX