20th-21st Century Spanish

Gortázar was one of the first students to graduate from the School of Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country, in 1977. In 1982 he obtained a research and creation grant from the Caja de Ahorros Vizcaína savings bank of Bilbao. His work is a personal fusion of figuration derived from , the mass media and the Basque avant-gardes. The depiction of the human figure is a signature aspect of Gortázar’s work, setting it in the midst of banal and ironic scenes.

In the early 1990s Gortázar suffered from a profound artistic crisis that left him with a total lack of ideas until 1997. Thematically speaking, this period would however mark a turning point in his creation, which, from that moment onwards, focused on stifling precarious spaces, often devoid of any human presence, and on blank canvases.

He currently works in his hometown combining his career as a painter with teaching at the School of Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country.