These are words of the artist Xabier Gantzarain, dedicated to the painter. As Gantzarain himself explains, at the age of 14 he started working at the Valverde Printing Office of Donostia-San Sebastián, as he was a good draftsman. There he saw them for the first time, thanks to the reproductions, Cezánne, Modigliani, Picasso, Klee… He was at the San Sebastian School of Arts and Crafts. He moved to Paris in 1959, where he met Rafael Ruiz Balerdi.

In 1967 he won the Basque Painting Grand Prix competition with Pablo Picasso’s Tribute to Gernika. This work is currently missing. The ceramic mural he placed in Pasaia in 1974 has also disappeared.

In his long and fruitful career, José Luis Zumeta has carried out various works, but in most cases abstract.

Home of ARGIA

When the Semanario ARGIA celebrated its 90th anniversary, the cover of the weekly was a work by José Luis Zumeta, in a special issue. This beautiful work graph deserved to be within reach of people close to ARGIA, so we brought out a limited series.

“I see no explanation for the picture”

Zumeta has been interviewed on more than one occasion by ARGIA. Among them is the long interview by Amets Arzallus in 2008. The words collected in this conversation are as follows: "I don't give any importance to concept or theory, on the contrary, I don't see any explanation to the picture. But of course, if painting is conceptual, the no-word concept is usually difficult and needs a title or an explanation. I prefer the other way, painting the figure, and getting the picture to somewhere, and at the end of that path there will be some idea. My ideas have a way, you don’t have the idea and you put that in, that stays lifeless.”