Roberto Sebastián Matta. Matta

"I'm not an artist.
I'm somebody who tries to construct images that will once help us realize the essence of the verb 'to see'." Roberto Matta

On Saturday, 31 August 2024, Tommaso Calabro opens the exhibition Matta in his Venice gallery at Palazzo Donà Brusa in Campo San Polo. The show celebrates Roberto Sebastián Matta (Santiago, Chile, 1911 – Civitavecchia, 2002), one of the most visionary artists of the twentieth century.

Described by Marcel Duchamp as "the most profound painter of his generation", Matta was born in Santiago, Chile, but started out as an architect in Europe and worked with Le Corbusier himself. His encounter with Picasso and his masterpiece Guernica motivated him to pursue painting. Moving to New York in 1939, he joined the community of émigré Surrealists, including Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, André Masson, and André Breton, and soon became a key figure in contemporary painting. Matta helped create a new concept of space within Surrealist painting, anticipating some innovations of Abstract Expressionism. He broke the conceptual and constructive principles of spatial representation, opening it up to cosmic explosions and subjective implosions, inhabited by floating organic forms with bright, often bold colors.

The "Matta" exhibition presents a series of over twenty works, including canvases, works on paper and sculptures, created by the artist during his most creative and prolific years. These are works from his New York period (1939-1949), when Matta exhibited in the city's most important galleries—from the Julien Levy Gallery to the Pierre Matisse Gallery and Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century — and captivated artists such as Pollock, Rothko, Gorky, and Motherwell with the extreme automatism of his gesture. The exhibition also includes works from the 1950s, created in Rome and Milan, and, from 1954, in Paris, where the artist reached his stylistic maturity. During these years, Matta developed his vision of the "open cube" and created cycles of large canvases marked by a cosmological epic, where the evolution of species, the dreamlike universe of the mind, and the mutations of nature in the infinitely small and the infinitely large take shape.
A section of the exhibition will be entirely dedicated to design pieces created by Matta for the Ultramobile collection, conceived and produced in 1971 by Dino Gravina in collaboration with the masters of Surrealism. Included are the seats Sacco Alato – in both its bronze and aluminum editions – Margarita and Malitte, an ever-changing seating-system of five polyurethane blocks, which is now part of the permanent collection of important museums, including MoMA – the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Galleria Nazionale in Rome.
After the major exhibitions dedicated to Leonor Fini, Stanislao Lepri, Tiger Tateishi, William Copley and Harold Stevenson, with this exhibition Tommaso Calabro continues to support the rediscovery and appreciation of artists associated with the Surrealist movement and the figure of Alexander Iolas.

Brief biography

Roberto Antonio Sebastián Matta-Echaurren was born in Santiago, Chile, on November 11, 1911.
Upon graduating in Architecture from the Catholic University of Chile, he set sail for Europe and arrived in Paris. From 1934 to 1936, he worked in Le Corbusier's studio, and, in 1935, he met Federico García Lorca, who gave him a book with a few words of introduction for Dalí. It was Dalí who put him in touch with André Breton.
Matta travels across Europe, meeting prominent figures of the cultural and artistic scene of the time, including Alvar Aalto, Gabriella Mistral, Gropius, Moholy- Nagy, Magritte, Henry Moore and Roland Penrose. In 1937, Matta is invited to urge Pablo Picasso to complete Guernica for the Paris International Exposition.
Matta associates with the Surrealist group by frequenting the Deux Magots. His meeting with Gordon Onslow Ford proves crucial, as this encourages him to begin painting his first canvases. In 1939, an important summer meeting takes place with Breton, Tanguy, and Marcel Jean at Chemillieu, in the house chosen for them by Gertrude Stein. Matta discussesThe Passage from Virgin to Bride with Marcel Duchamp. In the same year, in Paris, he shares a house with Pablo Neruda.
With the outbreak of World War II, Matta, moves to New York alike many of the European Surrealists. Being the only one who speaks English and possessing a highly charismatic personality, he exerts a decisive influence on young American artists. He meets Fernand Léger, Kurt Seligmann, Piet Mondrian and Walter Gropius, who have launched the New Bauhaus in Chicago.
In 1942, he holds his first solo exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery.
The following year, his twin sons, Gordon and Batan, are born. In 1947, Matta is included in the exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947, and, in 1948, he participates for the first time in the Venice Biennale. By the end of the year, he permanently leaves New York. In 1949, Matta returns to Europe, settling in Rome, where he stays until 1954. His contribution to the Roman art scene is significant, representing a new blend of Surrealist spirit and American painting.
In 1950, Matta marries Angela Faranda, with whom he has a son, Pablo Echaurren, born in 1951. In 1954, Matta moves to Paris, where he strengthens his collaboration with Iolas, who proves to be his best art dealer. He settles with the American Malitte Pope, and the following year, their daughter Federica is born, followed by their son Ramuntcho in 1960. William Rubin organizes Matta's first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1957.
In 1958, Matta speaks out against the torture in Algeria with a politically charged work, La question, in response to the eponymous book by Henri Alleg. Until 1968,... read the rest of the article»