«Drawing, so often considered as an exception or interval, a moment of rest in an artist's production, is constituted in Portugal as a discipline with a very broad spectrum, although it is not uncommon for artists who, although they practice it continuously, , for this or that reason do not make it visible. This is the case with José de Guimarães, an artist whose position of open notoriety in the artistic scene contrasts in a blatant and paradoxical way with the lack of knowledge of such a relevant segment of the work, which remained almost entirely unpublished until today.

This book presents drawings covering a period of almost fifty years. What can be seen is an extraordinarily diverse set of works, marked by experimentation, freedom and the voluptuousness of doing, where the hand is refined and thought is formed. Between the hobby and self-discovery, the fight against boredom and the slow construction of a language of its own, drawing is for José de Guimarães the territory par excellence of thematization of multiplicity. From drawings made with a typewriter or ink projected with an airbrush, a large set of erotic drawings inspired by Hokusai's prints, drawings of slow construction or sketches with a childlike appearance in which the hand is given freedom and the vertigo of search, everything here it manifests itself in the jubilation of disorder. Gruta e Cranio – Desenho_1963-2011 is thus a surprising opportunity to revisit the work of José de Guimarães through drawing, the "greatest temptation of the spirit", according to Paul Valéry.» [Nuno Faria]