Born in Chile in 1911, Matta left for Paris in 1932. While working as a draftsman in the studios of the architect Le Corbusier, Matta made frequent trips to Spain where he became friends with the poet Fredrico Garcia Lorca. Matta used a letter of introduction written by Garica Lorca to meet Salvador Dali and Andre Breton. In 1937, he became a member of the Surrealist Group.

As the political situation deteriorated in Europe, Matta left for New York in 1938. During his New York period (1938 to 1948), Matta created some of the finest work of his entire career. He played a crucial role in the development of Abstract Expressionism, greatly influencing the art of his contemporaries, such as Gorky, Pollack, De Kooning, Rothko, and Motherwell.

In 1945 Matta made a dramatic and controversial move: he shifted his focus from abstraction to figurative art. Matta’s paintings had been dominated by his fascination with the inner states of consciousness; he now felt impelled to paint what was going on in the outside world. This change of direction was largely inspired by Matta’s growing awarenessof wartime atrocities.

Feeling alienated by the increasingly formalist concerns of the New York art scene, Matta returned to Europe in 1948. Over the next three decades, his restless energy led him to reside in Rome, London and Paris, as well as travel to Chili, Peru, Mexico and Havana.

In 1956, Matta was given a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1970 he had a retrospective at the National Gallery, Berlin, and in 1986, at the Pompidou Art Center, Paris. Roberto Matta, the youngest and the last of the original Surrealists, died in a hospital near his home in Tarquina, Italy, 70 miles north of Rome on November 23, 2002. He was 91 years old.

 

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