BY SANTIAGO LONDOÑO VÉLEZ of personal expressive codes is most evident during the first years of the s, when he more decidedly uses compositions based on grids which resemble the structure of a crossword puzzle, a pas- time based on the decryption and completion of words. Within this system of representation he draws Love Letters ( - ; FIGS. 34 35 , 164 , 248 249 , 252 and 284 ), which in the manner of a palimpsest is based on the idea of a manuscript erased again and again to write upon it anew. He also creates calligaphic drawings and ideograms, as shown in Some of Olga’s Dreams ( ; FIG. 283 ), in which threads of fingers do homage to his wife’s work as a textile artist. Epitaph: Love Poem ( ; FIG. 36 ), Vertical Composition ( ), and A Pair of Gloves  and  ( ), are drawings in which the presence of fingers, profiles, heads, and sexual organs, is recurrent and powerful. In Re- flections of a Monologue  and  ( ), two heads in profile confront each other and, as the title suggests, find themselves in a soliloquy without listening, for they are dead and dearth of ears. In the up- per and lower edges are grids (see FIG. 37 ) with hieroglyphs (penis / finger, face / finger, nipple / finger, nipple / mouth), which seem to refer precisely to a dialogue of the deaf about life and death. is symbolic reference had already been discussed in the suite of three drawings entitled Epitaph: ree Tombstones for One Man № ( ; FIGS. 5 and 32 ), in which the entire image is built around a grid, dominated by a head in profile, accompanied by the hieroglyphs of sex (mouth / fingers / breasts) operating as inscriptions engraved on a funeral stone. In Charting oughts in Hieroglyphics  and  ( ; FIG. 250 ), one of the works presented in the Galerie Albert Loeb in Paris in late , Amaral reaffirms the purpose that his language has a sym- bolic character, as well as in the unsettling and explicit Trilogy: Se- ries of ree Crosswords ( ; FIG. 33 ), which returns to the idea that the understanding of sex is a great mystery to reason and that the unconscious only gives itself up to represent and fantasize. Other drawings that were part of the same exhibition, drawn in pencil on paper or pencil on prepared paper, watercolor, and gouache, are Fragment of an Idea for a Totem ( ; FIG. 38 ), which presents a vertical accumulation of three male heads in profile, and Dissolving Component Parts ( ; FIG. 39 ), in which the sense of decay and dis- solution of forms is emphasized on a surface that appears crafted from oneiric remnants. Among the drawings on white paper no- table for the great fragility of line that dissolves in shadows to in- dicate volumes and the imaginative richness of the elements, are  . ‣ . Trilogy: Series of Three Crosswords № , and  , “”™‰. —™×—‡ cm each, gesso, pencil and watercolor on paper.