Jungle stories of hidden hues: sinister symbols of modern encroachment lurk in the lush, primeval forests of Uruguayan painter Jose Gamarra.

• Author: Bach, Caleb

Uruguayan painter Jose Gamarra lives and works in Arcueil on the outskirts of Paris. It is a twenty-minute train ride from downtown, and enroute, as one ponders the tree-lined streets and sea of mansard roofs, inevitably visions of lost generations come to mind, existentialists shrowded in cigarette smoke, avant-gardists on some new cutting edge. But, upon entering Gamarra's studio, all such daydreams dissolve, as one is met by distant, untouched continents of mythic proportion from a primeval age. It is as if the artist, as a latter-day Frederick Catherwood or Charles Darwin, had just returned from an expedition to the Mesoamerican Highlands or the Amazon Basin. The walls of his studio are graced by painted expanses of verdant growth that obliterate any sense of urban life outside. Everywhere are tropical songbirds in flight, storm-swollen streams, and mystical light glowing through the canopy of lianas and undergrowth.

Gamarra's meticulously rendered treatments of utopian idylls are spellbinding in their beauty, but they can be deceptive. Indeed, a careful examination of many of his landscapes reveals all is not well in paradise. Amid the towering growth often lurk small but potent symbols of exploitation and violation: silhouettes of soldiers, missionaries, advanced technology. modern culture. Gamarra's immense canvases resemble stagedrops -- with emphasis on the word drop -- because ultimately they document permanent decline and irreparable loss on a continental scale. The paintings at first seem gentle as they reach out and beckon, but then their true, disturbing message detonates like a delayed charge.

Gamarra, who prefers to go by his surname, belongs to a distinguished line of Uruguayan masters that includes Juan Blanes, Pedro Figari, Joaquin Torres Garcia, Gonzalo Fonseca, and Hermenegildo Sabat. He was born in 1934 in Tacuarembo, a municipality not far from the Brazilian border, but he spent his formative years in Montevideo, the beneficiary he progressive educational system established in Uruguay earlier in the century by reformers Jose Enrique Rodo and Jose Batlle y Ordonez.

"My father was in the army," Gamarra chuckles, acknowledging a certain irony in that many of his paintings criticize the military establishment. "Neither my family nor I ever had faith in the idea of making a living at painting. My teachers were the individuals who pushed me, especially one, Maria Teresa Antelo, who encouraged me at every turn. She is still alive and enjoys an international reputation as a visionary educator."

"Public School Number 109 near the Hipodromo was one of five pilot schools in the capital," the artist's wife, Dilma, adds. "They offered the usual courses, but also there were special classes for music, creative writing, opportunities to attend ballet performances, musical concerts. It was remarkable because the level of education was very high, even though it was a very modest, working-class barrio."

After his first solo exhibition at the age of thirteen, Gamarra continued to pursue painting and printmaking classes at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Montevideo. When he was twenty-four, he traveled by bus and truck through much of the Amazon Basin, documenting with his camera the infinite reaches of jungle, shots that eventually would be of great value to him in the studio.

Gradually, Brazil became his new base of operations, first as a student at the art school attached to the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de...