Matta Roberto

Biography

Roberto Matta Echaurren, who liked to introduce himself as "Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren", known as Roberto Matta, born November 11, 1911 in Santiago, Chile and died in Civitavecchia (Italy) on November 23, 2002, is a Chilean surrealist painter, naturalized French at the age of sixty-eight.
Matta began studying architecture in Santiago, Chile. In 1933, he abandoned his career to move to France. He first worked in Le Corbusier's studio, then traveled to Spain, where he became friends with the poets Rafael Alberti and Federico Garcia Lorca. He also traveled to Scandinavia, where he met Alvar Aalto, and to London, where he met Henry Moore, Roland Penrose and René Magritte.
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At the request of Salvador Dalí, he went to see André Breton who immediately adopted him: "They said to me: "You are a surrealist!" I didn't even know what that meant...". In the surrealist magazine *Minotaure*, Matta wrote texts on architecture that opposed the rationalism of Le Corbusier.
An important step for Matta came in the summer of 1939 when, accompanied by Esteban Francès and Gordon Onslow-Ford, he stayed at the Château de Chemillieu. They were joined by André Breton and his family, Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage. The presence of Yves Tanguy seems particularly significant in Matta's training at this time.
At that time he painted a series of paintings experimenting with a new technique: with a cloth he spreads the color on the canvas, which, thus spread, determines the subsequent stroke of the brush, approaching the process of automatic writing. He calls this series "Psychological Morphologies".
He left for New York at the request of Marcel Duchamp to escape the war. Six months after his arrival, he exhibited for the first time in the United States at the Julien Levy gallery, which specialized in surrealism. Matta began working with phosphorescent pigments, allowing his paintings to produce images that varied according to the wavelength of the lighting.
He was inspired by the scientific press and was passionate about relativistic physics and theories related to the fourth dimension. He illustrated the cover of issue 4 of the surrealist magazine *VVV* in February 1944 and gave lectures at the New School of Social Research, where he received young Americans, including Jackson Pollock.
He illustrated Denis de Rougemont's *Letters on the Atomic Bomb*, published in New York by Brentano in 1946. In September 1947, his first monographic exhibition in Paris was organized, the catalog including a text by Breton written in 1944: "The pearl is spoiled in my eyes...".
Roberto Matta founded with Patricia Kane Matta (1923-1972) the magazine *Instead*, comprising seven issues, including a double. This magazine appeared from January to November 1948, with a contribution from Stéphane Hessel. In October 1948, he was excluded from the surrealist group, suspected by Breton of an affair with the wife of the painter Arshile Gorky, which would have contributed to the latter's suicide.
Matta then returned to Chile, published a text on the "role of the revolutionary artist", then returned to Europe, settling in Italy, first in Ischia and then in Panarea, where he formed friendships with Leonardo Cremonini.
In 1952, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg inspired him to write *Les Rosenbelles*. In 1958, he painted *La Question, Djamila* after reading *La Question* by Henri Alleg, which recounted torture in Algeria. In 1964, he paid tribute to Julian Grimau, executed in Spain, with *Les Puissances du désordre*, a 9-metre-long composition.
*Burn, baby burn* (1965-1967) is a critique of the Vietnam War. Matta is comfortable with very large formats; his canvases often exceed 10 meters. In 1968, he created environments by covering the walls and ceilings of the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris.
The same year, he participated in the first cultural congress of Havana, Cuba, and took part in the May events in France. After Pinochet's coup d'état in Chile on September 11, 1973, he cut all ties with his native country: "It is this exile that has determined my whole life, between two cultures. My work is a work of separation...".
In 1979, Matta obtained French nationality and married Germana Ferrari in 1980. In 1984, the Galerie Samy Kinge organized the exhibition *Matta. Point d'appui*. Roberto Matta produced with his son Ramuntcho about ten short films for French television. A year later, a significant part of his work was exhibited at the Musée national d'art moderne in France.
In his last years he received important distinctions such as the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in Spain in 1985, the National Art Prize of Chile in 1990 and the Praemium Imperiale in 1995, awarded by the Imperial Family of Japan.
Matta is the father of twins Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) and John Sebastian Matta known as Batan (1943-1976), as well as Pablo Echaurren (born in 1951), Federica Matta (born in 1955), Ramuntcho Matta (born in 1960) and Alisée Matta (born in 1969).