Literature

Today, José Gamarra is known all over the world. His paintings can be found at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, at the Bibliothèque de France, etc. But also at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, at the National Museum of Uruguay, in Africa, etc. Yet when asked, Gamarra never really thought about building his reputation. He preferred to concentrate on his art, letting things happen. This was without counting on the support of three key figures: his gallery owner Albert Loeb; a famous art critic, Philippe Dagen; and finally some collectors who fell in love with his work at first sight. Among them, Heber Perdigon is the author of a monograph on the painter.

Through his painting, José Gamarra addresses many of the themes explored by the history of modern painting. During his training years, he painted astonishingly realistic portraits of his comrades. At the end of the 1950s, under the influence of artists such as Paul Klee, he developed an abstract signography. From the 1960s, a brighter and more playful period began for Gamarra, under the influence of Andy Warhol's pop art. At the turn of the 1970s/80s, Gamarra reached maturity by painting images of a paradise in decline. Thus, the painter's forests are beautiful and luxuriant, certainly. However, they include the warning signs of a coming catastrophe, causing diffuse unease.

"Histoires de papier", is a French-Spanish bilingual book, it brings together 300 unpublished works on paper: color, black and white by the painter José Gamarra. The art critic Christine Frérot has contributed a text on Gamarra's drawings. There are other texts analytical on the painter's drawings. Each work is accompanied by a technical sheet: format, technique and year of creation. The book contains a biography of the painter, his individual and collective exhibitions and a bibliography.

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.