The bilingual monograph: French and Spanish dedicated to José Gamarra, a great French-Uruguayan artist, traces the career of an itinerant painter between Uruguay, Brazil and France, where the artist has lived since 1963. The reader will discover through this book 75 years of artistic career from the age of 12.

Discover the Uruguayan figurative painter in his studio in Arcueil. A film directed by Olivier Le Vaillant. A production of the City of Arcueil and the municipal gallery Julio Gonzalez.

José Gamarra situates his story in the beginning; when the continent was jungle and the urban universe had not yet made an irruption. Gamarra situates his narration in the enormous and aesthetic dimension of the jungle; a figure that since the Discovery of America became in the western imaginary the identifying feature of the continent: it is the American landscape par excellence. It exalts its disturbing and mysterious majesty, and contrasts it with the modernity that appears in the form of industrial artifacts (helicopters, television) reflecting the tragic manner of the arrival of modernity to the continent.

Gamarra created signs: monochromatic, calligraphy, reliefs, textures with somber colors, of strong visual impact. The artist explains the process to materialize his creation.

"I began to handle a plane, a material support, and the signs. It could be said that I took from informalism that way of playing with matter, as a support for what I wanted to read, which were the signs. They were invented signs, but linked to the first cultures of my land. What I do is a mixture of symbolism with American painting. I use a palette with shades of black, brown and white, but before the work, the man disappears, only the virgin canvas and a need to say inexplicable things. Because to explain is contradictory; that is why these works do not have titles, only numbers. They are just paintings."

Gamarra does not go astray because he is young, nor is he transformed by it. If he knew how to master, from very early on, the secrets of technique, one can attribute to the natural boldness of age a depth that is not common. And he can venture into paths that, usually, are considered reserved for more experienced maturity.