Marianne Gast (1910-1958)

Marianne Gast (Germany: Schierke, 1910 – Cologne, 1958) was the first wife of the artist Mathias Goeritz (Dánzig [now Gdansk], Poland; 1915 – Mexico City, Mexico; 1990). Although artistically she always lived in the shadow of her husband, this translator, gallery owner, language teacher and, above all, photographer, is the author of a work of great interest. Marianne Gast took landscape photography, portraits, ethnographic photography, but she specialized in architectural photography and works of art. In her images, lines and volumes are important. She makes subjects of details: fragment of a wall, part of a railway track. Even in his early works his gaze moves from the general to the concrete, to the detail.

The Lafuente Archive and the Santander Image Documentation Center (CDIS) of the Santander City Council pay tribute to Marianne Gast on the sixtieth anniversary of her death. And they do so with an exhibition at the CDIS curated by Manuela Alonso Laza, which shows a selection of photographs belonging to the Lafuente Archive, specifically the Mathias Goeritz documentary collection. The forty-two photographs, signed by Marianne Gast or Marianne Goeritz, focus on the projects El Eco (1952-1953) and Las Torres de Ciudad Satélite (1957), by Mathias Goeritz, although there are also images related to the couple’s private life.