Roberto Matta

Roberto Matta is a surrealist painter born in 1911 with the Chile and died in Civitavecchia (Italy) the November 23rd 2002.

Born with the Chile in 1911, Matta starts with studies of architecture in Santiago. It gives up its Chilean career in 1933 for France. He works the first time in the workshop of Le Corbusier then voyage in Spain, where he binds with the poets Rafael Alberti and Federico Garcia Lorca. He is constantly moving: Scandinavia, meets with Alvar Aalto, London, Henry Moore, Roland Penrose and Magritte.

At the request of Salvador Dali, it will see André Breton which declares it Surréaliste: “They said to me: “You are surrealist! ” I did not even know what that wanted to say…” It is excluded in 1948 for obscure reasons, but will reinstate the movement in 1959.

He thus works with the surrealist ones. He writes in the review Minotaure texts on the architecture which is opposed to the rationalism of Le Corbusier inter alia. He develops the technique psychological morphologies : one first of all spreads out the color over the fabric with a rag, the color thus spread out will inspire the later layout of the brush. One approaches thus the processes of expensive automatic writing to the surrealist ones.

It leaves to New York at the request of Marcel Duchamp to flee the war. Six months after its arrival, it exposes for the first time to the United States to the gallery Julien Levy, specialized in surrealism. It off gives conferences to New School Social Research and receives many young Americans in his workshop, of which Jackson Pollock.

In 1948 (date where it is expelled of the surrealist movement, Matta leaves for Chile, where it publishes an insistent text on the “role of the revolutionary artist, which must redécouvrir new emotional relations between the men”, then for Italy, where it settles.

Its political commitment takes an increasingly important place in its work. In 1952, the lawsuit of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg inspire to the pinks to him are beautiful (Rosenberg will be carried out the following year). In 1958, after the reading of the book of Henri Alleg on torture in Algeria, it paints the Question, Djamila . In 1964, to pay homage to the Communist leader Julian Grimau, carried out in Spain the previous year, it paints the Powers of the disorder , immense a 9 meters length composition. And it takes part in January 1968 in the first cultural congress of Havana, to discuss the cultural problems of the underdeveloped countries.

In France, it takes an active share with the events of May 1968. Lastly, in 1973, it violently gives an opinion against the coup d'etat of the general Pinochet in Chile and cut any bond with its native land: “It is this exile which determined all my life, between two cultures. My work is a work of separation. ” “From the exile, I passed to the “Ex it”, some share between known and the unknown, reality and the imaginary one. Where poetry starts. ”

He dies in Civitavecchia, close to Rome the November 23rd 2002.

External bonds

Works
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Exposures

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