Some pictures by Matta

30 March '07 in art, visual art

Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren (usually just called ‘Matta’) was a Chilean surrealist painter who made some breathtaking art. You don’t need any background information to appreciate the paintings – but if you find it useful, read the passage below. Otherwise, just skip to the pictures!

[Matta] presented the landscape as the signifier for human psychology. During the 1930s he developed his concept of “psychological morphology” and created his first “inscapes,” which he thought of as landscapes of the inner mind. Futuristic in form, these inscapes often juxtaposed a barren vision of an indefinable landscape with abstract forms drawn from basic organic shapes and conceived as the aesthetic form of the artist’s own psychological state. Similarly, Matta’s psychological morphology represents his concept of an introspective mental state that draws its forms from organic materials such as clouds, rocks, water, microscopic organisms, and other natural substances. The Surrealists believed that organic forms were particularly successful in creating associations in the mind of a viewer, since they were part of the natural environment. By creating work steeped in vaguely recognizable forms, Matta hoped to catalyze visual associations with the workings of the viewer’s own inner mind.
- from Basilio et al, Latin American and Caribbean Art: MoMA at El Museo

There’s also a bio of him on the comprehensive website, www.matta-art.com. I recommend visiting that site if you like him. It also has hundreds of pictures. The pictures in this post are from that site, except where I’ve said otherwise.

It’s worth noting that many of the paintings below are huge. Wake (1974-75) is 10 metres by 4 metres! Okay, enough of my yakkin’: here’s the pictures.

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Dark Light, 1940

Rocks, 1940

Listen to Living, 1940 [from MoMA.org]

Endless Nudes, 1942

The Disasters of Mysticism, 1942

Science, Conscience, Et Patience Du Vitreur, 1944

A Grave Situation, 1946 [from Wikipedia]

How Ever, 1947

Wound Interrogation, 1948

Untitled, 1949

Les Roses Sont Belles, 1951

Let Any Flowers Bloom, 1952

Untitled, 1952

To Give Painless Light, 1955

Tierra Abierta, 1957

Etre Cibler Nous Monde, 1958

L’Etang De No, 1958

L’Interrompeur, 1958

To Give Painless Light, 1960

La Luz Del Proscrito, 1963-64

Les Puissances Du Desordre, 1964-65

Wake, 1974-75

Illumine Le Temps, 1975

La Coulee Automatique, 1976

Storming Water, 1996 [from Rogallery.com]