Roberto Matta
Bio
Roberto Mattta (Chile, 1911 - Italy, 2002) Studied architecture at the Catholic University of Santiago. He then moved to Paris (1933-1935) to work as a draughtsman in the studio of the Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, and became friends with the painter Marcel Duchamp.
In 1936 he traveled to Spain, where he met the poet Federico García Lorca and the painter Salvador Dalí. At the beginning of World War II he moved to the United States. Between 1939 and 1948 he lived in New York City, where he met André Breton, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and André Masson.
He was a participant and renovator of surrealism and a decisive character in the group of abstract expressionist artists of the 40's. In the beginning of his artistic work, his works reflected his metaphysical concerns, the importance of religious creations, and the importance of his work as an artist.
Statement
Beginning in the 1950s, the artist began to show a growing interest in the social-political events of the world and, particularly, in the Latin American reality. Throughout his career, Matta's artistic work underwent several mutations and ventured into different techniques. At the end of the 1930's he made his first large format oil paintings, a medium that would be the most characteristic of his production. For the creation of his initial works he used as a creative process the surrealist psychic automatism, seeking to bring to light the most recondite visions of the mind. In the 1950s, coinciding with his departure from surrealism, Matta developed a personal poetics. This coincides, on the one hand, with the appearance of figurative elements in his paintings and, on the other, with the intensification of his political consciousness. Since the 1970s, the presence of anthropomorphic figures in his images has become more and more frequent.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
