September 21, 1923 - March 12, 2010

Gerta was born in Berhomet, Romania. She and her brothers grew up in Czernowitz, in a time when that city was rich with cultural and intellectual activity.

During World War II, occupying forces deported the Jews of Czernowitz, including Gerta and her parents, to ghettos and concentration camps in Transnistria. Gerta and her father survived the ordeal; her mother did not. With family friend Konrad Deligdisch, Gerta found her way to a relocation camp in Vienna and from there emigrated to the United States, settling in Great Falls, Montana.

In the 1950's Gerta left Great Falls for California to study jewelry-making with the sculptor Victor Ries. In California she met and married John Wingerd. John and Gerta lived in San Francisco while he studied at UC Berkeley and she worked as a medical secretary. They moved to Oakland, where -- while raising two children and working at the Berkeley Art Center -- Gerta made a name for herself as a jeweler. She was a very creative and social force in the Bay Area arts and crafts community.

After their children had grown, John and Gerta moved to rural Rail Road Flat, California. Gerta continued making jewelry, and John became part of the area's chamber music scene. John died in 1993, and Gerta returned to the Bay Area. She studied fashion design at Alameda College while gradually retiring from the jewelry business. Having found a second home for herself in Paris, Gerta for many years split her time between Paris and the San Francisco Bay Area. In her last years she focused her creative energy on the art of collage. When she could no longer live alone she moved to Eugene, Oregon, to be close to her son and his family.