He later found a variation on the theme in the tyrannoktoni or Tyrannicides , the Athenian group of statues depicting a historical event: the murder of the tyrant Hipparcus by Aristogeiton and Harmodios.
Cortazar was the first living artist invited by the Mexican National Museum of Art to exhibit by rendering a reinterpretation of one of Mexico's greatest masters: José Clemente Orozco.
Instead, the art-making language he has developed, with its unique blend of figurative and abstract elements, has evolved out of his technical experiments as a painter and draftsman, and out of his investigation and assimilation of a variety of influences, from the economical, expressive lines of such modern masters as Picasso and Matisse to the figure altering techniques of the Irish-born, British painter Francis Bacon.
Like Bacon, who once remarked that "flesh is the reason oil painting was invented," Cortázar approaches and handles his materials in a way that is both elegant and visceral".
He became almost a permanent fixture at Art Miami with Praxis Gallery, where he exhibited every year from 1994 to 2006, ten of these solo shows where his works were acquired by American and European collectors.
Eugenio Lopez Alonso bought a Cortazar as his first painting in 1990[12] and since has built Coleccion Jumex, one of the largest and most prominent collections in the world.