Gunther Gerszo

Gunther Gerzso (June 17, 1915 – April 21, 2000) was a Mexican painter, designer and director and screenwriter for film and theatre.

Gerzso was born in Mexico City, in the times of the Revolution. His parents were Oscar Gerzso (Hungarian: Gerzsó Oszkár), 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).

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