

The art market is one more item in the culture of a country and what is expected of it. There are times when I am tired, but generally my love for life gives me the strength to conclude this great painting that is existence. The most important thing is not the endless stories I have to tell, the most important thing is that Uri is a good person. I am the one who spent 3 years in the Suez Canal. Uri is me, I am the one who got on his tractor, and while he was plowing in the kibbutz, two explosive mines detonated and he survived. That's why when people call me Jorge I find it hard to react, but for Uri. But my stay in Israel shaped me as a good person. I was wounded, I lost friends and I just have to say that the stories are many. With this name I enlisted and belonged to the 890th paratrooper corps.

In this way, from Russia, hundreds of Jews with the name Jorge Gonzalez left. Having accepted I gave him my Uruguayan passport with my old name.

A person who was waiting for me approached me and asked me: "Wouldn't you like to help the Jews who are being persecuted and cannot leave Russia because of their documents? I answered with a short question, "Where do I have to go?". Having just arrived in Uruguay from Israel, I went to the civil registry office to get my new name. With this new name I was part of great and important historical events. As you will notice, my childhood gives for many interpretations and different consequences, one of them is the artist I am today and another one is the permanent search for happiness, the right of every human being and not a gift that is granted. Today I regret not having spent more time with him. I had an older brother who was 5 years older than me. The clouds were also a refuge for my loneliness: in them I looked for and saw colossal shapes that made me forget everything around me. When it wasn't raining, I would go to a sawmill on Joanicó Street, just around the corner from my house, and climb the tall logs, which were transformed into immense mountains or trenches of a bloody war. That water would turn into mighty rivers where my humble and imaginary boat would face terrible storms. There I would let that twig sail over the running water. Today, in the light of a greater reasoning, I am grateful for those winter mornings and afternoons when I would wait for the rain to come and play with a twig on the side of the curb. In any case, I believe that some of these shortcomings shaped and fostered my imagination and the critical freedom I enjoy. Today I describe my childhood as a great inner life, where solitude was the refuge of a troubled home.
