Gerzso was born in
Mexico City, in the times of the
Revolution. His parents were Oscar Gerzso (), a Hungarian immigrant, and Dore Wendland, German by birth. After his father's death a few months after Gunther was born, his mother married a German jeweler. The economic crisis during the revolution caused the family to flee to Europe in 1922. The family returned to
Mexico two years later and her mother divorced. Not being able to provide for the children, she sent Gunther to
Lugano, Switzerland to live with his uncle Dr.
Hans Wendland, who was an influential name in the art world. Gunther, then a teenager, met
Paul Klee and lived among his uncle's collection of paintings which included works by
Pierre Bonnard,
Rembrandt,
Paul Cézanne,
Eugène Delacroix and
Titian. During his time in Lugano, he also met
Nando Tamberlani, noted set designer who would introduce him to the world of theater. In 1931, due to the impact of the
Great Depression in Europe, Dr. Wendland sent the boy back to his mother in Mexico City. Back home he started doing sketches for set designs and writing plays influenced by Mr. Tamberlani. Two years later he started working in a local theater production company run by
Fernando Wagner. In 1935 he was offered a scholarship to study at the
Cleveland Play House where he made more than 50 set designs over the course of four years. During the 1940s and '50s he made various set designs for Mexican, French and American films. He won a total of five
Premios Ariel (The Mexican Equivalent of the Oscars) for Best
Production Design as well as two more honorary Ariel Awards in 1994 and 2000. During this time he collaborated with directors like
Emilio "El Indio" Fernández in
Un Día de Vida (1950),
Luis Buñuel in
Susana (1951),
Una Mujer sin Amor (1952) and
El rio y la muerte (1955),
Yves Allégret in
Les Orgueilleux (1953), and
John Huston in
Under the Volcano (1984). In the late 1930s Gerzso also started painting as a hobby. The steady parade of beautiful actresses and interesting people he met in show business provided him with a great inspiration for his canvases which showed a mix of European and Mexican influences. His friend,
Bernard Pfriem, convinced him to enter the annual Art Exhibition at the
Cleveland Museum of Art where two of his works were selected. It was then that Gunther Gerzso started considering himself a painter more than a set designer. In 1941 Gerzso and his wife moved permanently to
Mexico City and in 1944 he joined a group of
surrealist painters that had taken refuge from the Second World War in Mexico. These artists were
Benjamin Péret,
Leonora Carrington,
Remedios Varo,
Alice Rahon and
Wolfgang Paalen. His works from this period show a clear surrealist influence, which he later abandoned when he started working his famous
abstracts. According to
Octavio Paz, Gunther Gerzso was one of the greatest Latin American painters, since it was he, along with
Carlos Mérida and
Rufino Tamayo, who opposed the ideologist aesthetic movement into which
muralism had degenerated. Gunther Gerzso was awarded the
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and later in 1978 he was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Bellas Artes. Gunther Gerzso died on April 21, 2000. ==Selected filmography==