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19- Interview with Jose Luis Zumeta by José Luis Merino, El País 26-6-2000.

20- José Ignacio Vidarte, Director of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: Zumeta.

21- Carlos Martinez Gorriaran: Zumeta’s travels between Atlas and Aralar 1994.

22- Carlos Martinez Gorriaran: Zumeta, a tribute and a commitment to painting, 2000.

23- José Luis Merino : Zumeta 1-2-3, 2000.

24- Annaïk Carricano: José Luis Zumeta, 2002.

25- Bernardo Atxaga: A story for my friend the painter Jose Luis Zumeta, 2000.

26- Koldo Izagirre: Zumeta, an individuality of our own, 2000. 

27- Joxe Austin Arrieta: Collateral harm, of course, 2000.

Interview with Jose Luis Zumeta

By José Luis Merino, El País, 26-6-2000

In Biarritz, 2002

Crypte Sainte Eugénie, Atlantica

Is there anything more gratifying than the very act of painting?

The act of painting does something very special for me; it is sometimes, not always, like taking on the present. It is a thing that does not happen in any other facet of life. You live the moment as a reality, you seize it. Yes, this is something highly pleasurable, something very special.

How much has your manner of painting changed over the years?

Not a great deal, except in that I have acquired more freedom or more clarity whereas before I worked more in a blind groping mariner. Fundamentally, however, I do not believe that since around the seventies or so and up to now, it has changed that much. Maybe before it was more organic, more vegetative, more relating to Nature and now it displays more geometric forms. There is a balance between the organic and the geometric in that one informs and the other formalises, to be crystal clear about it. The idea is to get the right balance between the two positions.

Is the most crucial thing for an artist to resolve the problems posed daily by the paintings?

This, in fact, is what fills your day and therefore fills your life. The crux of the matter is having the energy to start a painting. From that moment on, any problem that arises just has to be solved. Let the painting take you with it, wherever it is going and without you having too many a priori prejudices about it. This is the most crucial part for me; it is, effectively, my life. In fact, all my life, or most of it, is based on painting although, at the same time, love and relationships with people have their importance. To sum up, painting is one of the fundamentals of my life.

Are you saying that the days when you are not painting, there is something missing in your life?

Of course, exactly. Without painting, the days are very long and you even get a guilty conscience at times you don't feel well and you are missing something. It is not easy to fill the day as I am not a very diversified person; I think about painting practically the whole day. With the five or six hours I dedicate to painting, the day fills up. And, if everything turns out well, it has been a good day.

Do you still think that painting is pure impotence; that only minimal things flourish and that all that lies underneath is pure impotence?

I did say that once. And perhaps I know more about my painting now than before and that expression —so radical— has softened with time. Of course, the impotence is still there and still great. But now, at times, when an idea occurs, you have this feeling that you can really do it and you are more capable, and then you believe you that you can do anything.

Have you ever imagined a promoter arriving at your studio asking you to paint a 20-metre wide, 4-feet high mural?

I have done such a mural in Usurbil —a 145 square-metre one. I used to think that, from that point on, I would get more commissioned work. Before I dreamed of public work. I have now resigned myself to workshop activity. Without a shadow of doubt, one of my dreams has been to carry out large public works.

For a painter such as yourself that bases his art on strong vibrations of energy, is each canvas that you start preceded by some kind of internal prayer, a motto which is never to be repeated?

Using the resources that you are all too Familiar with, repetition, doing things the easy way —all these things constitute very real dangers. This is why I painted in a groping, blind way for many years. Now, with age, I am using more and more resources as, at some time or other, I have to take advantage of what is available, Nevertheless, throughout my life, I have tried to learn the unlearnt, the unknown. The sculptor Chillida says, "One has o do what one does not know". I want to learn from that which is done without awareness what comes from blindly groping and where you do not know if chance intervenes. This gives you a potential of renewal and you self-nourish yourself in an on-going manner.

Do you not think that time spent having a go at the powers that be is a waste of time in terms of creativity?

This phenomenon of getting involved in economic or social comment and falling over each other to become famous artists is a very dangerous path, indeed.

What, then, is a good path?

The bottom line always has to be to let yourself listen, hear and be open to your feelings. Reason can cause you to become lost. If you follow your feelings, there is less risk of you making mistakes than if you allow yourself to be guided by a form with vested interests or one that is excessively rational.

Do you believe that the powers that be need to control artists? Should the artist be aware of this and should he or she react by rebelling in order to always feel free?

I have not had this impression. On the contrary, nobody has taken me into account ever. And that is lust fine by me. I have never even had to fight against control because nobody has ever tried to control me, nor have they asked me for anything nor offered me anything. I have lived totally independently and isolated from all that.

Do figurative references display a greater input of anecdote than abstract ones?

The figurative lends a certain literary tendency.

And does abstract work have less supports (media)?

I do not do abstracts that do not contain certain figurative suggestions, although it is true that do tend to eliminate from abstract paintings that which is obvious figuration. They are suggestions of figuration that do not take concrete form as such.

How do you view what looks like is going to be the launching of your work on the international stage?

You are referring to the exhibition in New York. I do not think that that will be anything out of this world. I am the person most interested in it going well and I like the idea of being able to exhibit more. But I do not believe it is going to be that important.

The stroke in a painting of action possesses direct energy. Is there not a danger that the perception the spectator has of this is so direct that it is thereby limited and, what is more, ephemeral?

That direct stroke or gesture is neither ephemeral nor limited in its communicative function given that it indicates a time that passes rapidly if that is the case, and it is how it should be and where it should be. At times this stroke is more important than its colour or form.

In any great work, is the process of its creation itself perceivable?

I do not believe so. What I do think is that recognising the creative process around the artist, at times including an error here or a difficulty there in the work, is gratifying. However, for me the Mona Lisa, for example, seems impenetrable and this difficulty gives it its value, its enigma and its mystery.

A pictorial failure may dwell in a great work and in a humble one an artistic treasure, despite Gauguin's comment that a square centimetre of green is not the same as a square metre of green. Yes? No?

Everest is not the same as a small mountain with the same shape. Each painting has its own measurements and each size demands different treatment. I rarely start from a pre-conceived idea or sketch. Enlarging a small painting to a greater one requires changes.

Why, in order to paint, does one have to die?

No, no. One has to relive life many times and live a long life.

When, in the middle of creating a work, you find you are doing something that you have done previously, have you not got something rotten, ill-fated, counter-productive and useless for the future of the work in question?

The gesture, the strokes are not of an infinite diversity —the danger lies in having them memorised and consciously using them for an end-result you already know.

Does art go beyond a sense of beauty?

What is beauty ? It wouldn't be that ugliness is something that we don't know as beautiful?

Is painting anything more than just going fast or going slow to reach the indefinable?

Painting is a reflection of and an answer to one's experience of the world and it defines itself as time goes by; at times rapidly and, at others, slowly.

Is it important in art to know not so much what you should do as to do what you know?

What should be done or rather what should not be done is an ethical question. What actually comes out depends as much on you as on what the painting says for you, the agreements and disagreements in the dialogue that you have with it.

With all the great painters that have existed and that exist throughout our times, no one can claim the right to have invented any of the colours of the spectrum. Is this something lacking in the human species?

Nature already has all the colours. In a beetle, a bird, a butter-fly, a flower... there are reds, blues, yellow, green, violets... which are beyond all imagination.

At times the spectator sees figurative forms in totally abstract works. Why is this? Perhaps it is because the spectator has a fear of not finding anything related to reality? Or maybe it is because abstraction becomes the place where imagination can be best let loose?

Any organic form is susceptible to a figurative image and each spectator may give it a different interpretation, depending on their experiences and culture. Many people spend a long time seeing figures, scenes, observing the clouds, an old wall, a forest —it is a common and basic mechanism. When there is nothing but plans and geometry, this mechanism does not function and a person who is looking at the work solely for organic references is lost.

Interview by Jose Luis Merino, journalist and art critic. 

Zumeta

José Ignacio Vidarte

Director of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

THERE are many ways of looking at a painting, but often later on and quite unexpectedly, we realize that an indelible memory has been etched in the wake of our experience. This is precisely what happens on contemplating Zumeta’s work: the spirit is shaken and the soul saturated with colour, transforming observation into an intimate aesthetic experience to which we cannot remain indifferent.

Zumeta’s painting is like a devastating whirlwind that engulfs and drags, paradoxically enough, in a centrifugal form. There is no rest in observation: agitated and in zigzag, the eye madly takes in every edge, the centre, every minute detail or disproportionate shape that is, nevertheless, unable to retain it for any length of time. The fact is that to observe the absolute is to unleash the gaze; it is the desire to take everything in and be left with nothing. Because Zumeta does not represent external objects, “mentionables”; he keeps to the shapes that arise out of a passionate application of colour; this is his way of searching for the absolute in art: to enter the painting itself.

At the edge between abstraction and figuration there is often an unoccupied territory: a “no-man’s land” which runs from the “abstract which represents” to the “blurred figuration”, and back again. Zumeta’s paintings navigate in these quick sands, stealing from the abstract the riche gestures, the excessive expression or the exaggerated colour while, simultaneously, taking from narration the symbolism of the intent or the excitement of the recognisable. Thus the images are liberated, born of explosions of colour that, with no apparent order —or perhaps with plenty— fall on the canvas? With referents or without them, the observer can recognize a narrative; thought it may be a private and personal one, different each time, it is always full of a contagious vitality. An overwhelming labyrinth in which everyone looks for their own motives, and finds them, although uncertain of whether they were places there by the artist. It is almost a metaphysical experience, just like reality itself! Where are things, outside or with us? It cannot be said with conviction where the shapes arise in Zumeta’s work either, if they are underlying or just in our gaze. Un any case, de-orchestrated by the intense masses of colour, the images struggle, anxious and searing, suggestive and provocative, to escape from the coloured pastes.

Zumeta is a painter, given that the brush is his natural means of expression, and this is evident. As a member of the historical artist’s group Gaur, Zumeta is today one of those established artists whose international repercussion has been unjustly timid. It is of great satisfaction to me that the gallery Haim Chanin Fine Arts has organized this exhibition in New York and therby done justice to the artistic career of this Basque painter from Gipuzkoa. I sincerely hope that it will serve as a springboard for a greater knowledge and appreciation of the best of our art.

Zumeta’s travels between Atlas and Aralar
Carlos Martinez Gorriaran

Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa

Bilbao 1994

THE Atlas and Aralar mountain ranges are the telluric centres of the two worlds in question. Here we find the extremes of the itinerary illustrated in the most recent of Zumeta's works. The collection consists of tempera-and-ink drawings on paper. We can distinguish two related families. In one of these we see broad strokes of black ink on white paper, drawn with the countryside of Aralar in view and later coloured in the studio, the result being a rich effect of stained glass. In the other the style is more painting-like, in a way more «Moroccan», based on those opaque and velvety colour patches afforded by the tempera. There are sequenced rhythmic motifs that recall the ornamental systems of Maghreb, as well as scenes from Atlas, such as a traditional building painted with lively colours (of which Zumeta spoke on showing us these works for the first time). All these elements are arranged, with considerable freedom, on a screen with a more or less geometric background. While at times it is little evident, this geometry, like the weft of a very worn carpet or the grid of a blurred map, is something the observer may discern as a substrate beneath the colour and the strokes. A colouring and drawing that, as usual, display the freedom of execution and the classical luminosity so typical of Zumeta.

The broad and lively black strokes of some drawings and the fluid geometry of the others function in various complementary ways. As exercises in drawing with their own expressive interest, and also, thanks to his plastic qualities, as network that apprehends and captures on paper the mobile combination of scenes, colours, features, and quivering images that make up this iconographic journey between Atlas and Aralar.

In the old days, before photography had become widely adopted, the purpose of a travel journal was to provide its owner with agraphic record of the places he had visited. It might serve also to impress relatives and colleagues. Affluent travellers took with them a professional sketcher or engraver who would produce for them a travel book of distinction. Napoleon took with him to Egypt a host of sketchers to rediscover and reinvent the splendid ruins of the ancient Nile (for a Europe that was enlightened, romantic, and ready to learn more of the depths of time and space). Today we can compare those etchings and drawings with the cold and neutral images of the most conventional photography, and we know to what point the old paleotouristic trips consisted, above all else, in collecting fantastic images that recreated, through the medium of art, what the creative vision knew how to find among the things offered by nature and history to the traveller. What the trip was really about —what really lay behind the physical shifting, always hazardous and uncomfortable— was this narration, literary of pictorial. Each drawing of etching was the pass to a universe of unknown landscapes.

Today mass tourism, with instant cameras and home video, seeking away from home exactly what the travel brochures promise, has consigned that mode of travel to oblivion. The imaginary traveller has taken refuge in art, as wesee in these drawings. Zumeta's theme is the journey of the sensitivity, i.e. the aesthetic journey, effected in rare images of which the aim is to reproduce not the hackneyed tourist shots but rather the sensations, emotions, ideas, and memories that those places and itineraries elicit in the spirit of the traveller. With ordinary trips what happens is merely an illustration of one of the greatest of human misfortunes: our lot is so often to desire without achieving, or to achieve but no longer to desire. The same thing happens when one travels mechanically, without imagination, but on the other hand the aesthetic trip (what our illustrious ancestors called a sentimental journey) has the advantage of being inexhaustible. It renews itself constantly, is a much more creative thing than the simple observation.

An so this imaginary landscape extending between the Atlas mountains Morocco and the domestic mountains of Aralar, put before us by Zumeta, is that selfsame inexhaustible interior journey aroused by the art of physically travelling through the high, remote nooks of the Basque and Berber worlds. Art is a productive process notably similar to travelling. The best trips and the best works of art come about when it is trained sensitivity that directs movement. If there is to be a journey there must be travellers, and the same may be said of landscapes. A great designer of gardens, Cheng Gongzhou, wrote in this respect, «A landscape takes on life when its source is feeling, which has its origin in the human being... Without people there would be no feelings, and without these there would be no landscape.» In terms of an aesthetic of reception we could have said it another way, perhaps more precisely, but in a manner loss intuitive and therefore poorer aesthetically: without a receiver who contemplates it and gives it significance, especially without an artist (and the natural landscape is above all a cultural product of art), a segment of nature is an ecosystem, but not a landscape. The landscape is an aesthetic event: when a tree falls in the forest there are sound waves produced, but there is no sound if no one is there to listen. The place most aesthetically real is the imaginary one. The cognitive value of art lies in this, that it is capable of assigning significance, and therefore of engendering another mode of awareness (as we see in the present works) where before there were only great creases on the unfeeling crust of the earth.

Where narrative strength is concerned, these sketches remind us of the celebrated Papiroak that Zumeta executed in 1984/1985. The coincidence is not a chance one, but rather derives from the narrative logic common to the two works. While the Papiroak recreated, in tempera on corrugated cardboard, the universe of events, places, and anecdotes relating to the daily travels of the artist, in these present sketches Atlas and Aralar become spaces and moments that are just as intimate but, nevertheless, evocative for everyone.