Roberto Matta
ROBERTO MATTA
(Chilean, 1911 – 2002)
Untitled, Late 1940’s
Graphite, crayon and colored pencil on paper
19- 3/4 by 25- 5/8 in. (50.17 by 65.09 cm)
Miscellaneous: Indistinctly inscribed (near the lower edge) “Inner and outer lionized of knowful”
Roberto Matta moved to Paris in 1933 from his native Chile when he was 22. His work attracted the attention and admiration of André Breton, the head of the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Matta as a member in 1937.
In 1938, at the age of 27, he was featured alongside the other major members of the group in the ''International Exhibition of Surrealism'' in Paris, the final important exhibition that occurred in Europe until after WWII. In 1939, alongside many other Avant Garde artists residing in Paris, he left Europe and resettled in New York City where he was to remain until 1948.
During the period from the 1930’s through the 1940’s he produced most of his greatest works referred to as “morphological landscapes” or landscapes of the mind. He remained an important participant in almost all of the Surrealist activities until soon after the war, when he was expelled from the group by André Breton because of his involvement with the wife of an ailing Arshile Gorky, who later committed suicide.
Since 1937 he was in hundreds of solo exhibitions and a major traveling retrospective that began at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1957. His work lost some of its magic in the 1950’s which it never regained, but because of his love of painting he continued to work until his death.