Gortázar’s production ought to be ascribed to a brand of figuration deriving from and the mass media. The strength of his works is rooted in his use of colour, materialised in cold and subtly nuanced atmospheres.

The artist combines the language of Basque avant-gardes with references to American , within a style that stands half-way between the works of, on one hand, Aurelio Arteta (1879-1940) and Valentín Zubiaurre (1879-1963) and, on the other, Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and Larry Rivers (1923-2002). The Basque atmosphere and figuration is coupled in his works with American colours and compositions in a perfect blend of tradition and modernism.

The human figure is the absolute focus of his paintings, which the artist generally left untitled to avoid influencing the beholder, preferring instead for each individual to reach his/her own personal interpretation of the scene.

Gortázar created this particular work in 1990 just before suffering a creative crisis that would last until 1997. Here the artist plays with the double meaning of inside and outside. Taking a high viewpoint, he offers the spectator a vision of what is taking place behind the wall from which he seems to be looking at the scene.

Against a classic sky with solid portentous clouds, Gortázar presents a pensive character in profile, engrossed in his thoughts. In the background we see a group of trees of various shapes, sizes and colours (some dead, others alive; deciduous or in bloom), aligned across the whole of the canvas in an unhurried and orderly pace.

The rigidity of the scene and the flat, pure colours are reminiscent in ways of artists from the Quattrocento, while the drawing of the trees and the clouds brings to mind a more metaphysical mental landscape.