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Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Germana Matta Ferrari, dated 8 October 2018.
Roberto Matta, one of the most important second-generation Surrealist artists, was coming into his full maturity as an artist when he executed this explosive drawing in 1938. Leaving his native Chile for Paris in the early 1930s, Matta worked for a few years in the architectural firm of Le Corbusier. Family ties led him to Madrid in 1935 where he met famed Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, a momentous encounter that unleashed Matta’s creative energy and the following few years would be an exciting period of self-discovery and experimentation for the artist. In 1936 he met two more poets that would inform his artistic vision, fellow Chileans Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral. Mistral in particular, with her mystical and revolutionary spirit, influenced Matta’s intellectual growth while the tragedy of Lorca’s death in the Spanish Civil War propelled him to meet Salvador Dalí in 1937. Dalí in turn introduced him to the leader of Surrealism, André Breton who, immediately enamored with the young artist, asked him to contribute drawings to the Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris that January 1938.
The rest of 1938 for Matta was an exciting period of intense exploration and development, often in the company of other young surrealists, such as Gordon Onslow Ford with whom he spent the summer on the coast of Brittany. Reading P.D. Ouspensky’s esoteric book Tertium Organum, they began to explore notions of time and space and that would ultimately lead to Matta developing a series of “inscapes” and “psychological morphologies,” key concepts that would inform his entire subsequent painting practice. This drawing, executed during this pivotal period of experimentation and philosophical development is a jewel-like distillation of the psychic forces at play in Matta’s mind at the time. Here vibrant reds, greens, yellows and blues are arranged in vaguely horizontal planes suggesting a landscape while organic forms resembling vegetation spring up in ferociously energetic strokes. Interspersed throughout the drawing are delicate graphite passages that hint of erotic body parts and pulsate with a sexual energy.
Fully engaged with the surrealist practice of psychic automatism, this abstract “inscape” flows from the artist’s hand as he creates in an unconscious state that resembles a poetic or shamanic trance. Although fairly modest in size, this drawing holds enormous weight within Matta’s remarkable oeuvre as being literally the germinating point of the visionary morphologies that he would work with for the rest of his life. The next year, 1939, will see the artist leaving war-torn Europe for New York and yet more adventures, and this vibrant work, full of seaside breezes and sun, remains a distillation of this brief yet pivotal time in Matta’s artistic development.
Susan L. Aberth, Associate Professor of Art History, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Roberto Matta, one of the most important second-generation Surrealist artists, was coming into his full maturity as an artist when he executed this explosive drawing in 1938. Leaving his native Chile for Paris in the early 1930s, Matta worked for a few years in the architectural firm of Le Corbusier. Family ties led him to Madrid in 1935 where he met famed Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, a momentous encounter that unleashed Matta’s creative energy and the following few years would be an exciting period of self-discovery and experimentation for the artist. In 1936 he met two more poets that would inform his artistic vision, fellow Chileans Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral. Mistral in particular, with her mystical and revolutionary spirit, influenced Matta’s intellectual growth while the tragedy of Lorca’s death in the Spanish Civil War propelled him to meet Salvador Dalí in 1937. Dalí in turn introduced him to the leader of Surrealism, André Breton who, immediately enamored with the young artist, asked him to contribute drawings to the Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris that January 1938.
The rest of 1938 for Matta was an exciting period of intense exploration and development, often in the company of other young surrealists, such as Gordon Onslow Ford with whom he spent the summer on the coast of Brittany. Reading P.D. Ouspensky’s esoteric book Tertium Organum, they began to explore notions of time and space and that would ultimately lead to Matta developing a series of “inscapes” and “psychological morphologies,” key concepts that would inform his entire subsequent painting practice. This drawing, executed during this pivotal period of experimentation and philosophical development is a jewel-like distillation of the psychic forces at play in Matta’s mind at the time. Here vibrant reds, greens, yellows and blues are arranged in vaguely horizontal planes suggesting a landscape while organic forms resembling vegetation spring up in ferociously energetic strokes. Interspersed throughout the drawing are delicate graphite passages that hint of erotic body parts and pulsate with a sexual energy.
Fully engaged with the surrealist practice of psychic automatism, this abstract “inscape” flows from the artist’s hand as he creates in an unconscious state that resembles a poetic or shamanic trance. Although fairly modest in size, this drawing holds enormous weight within Matta’s remarkable oeuvre as being literally the germinating point of the visionary morphologies that he would work with for the rest of his life. The next year, 1939, will see the artist leaving war-torn Europe for New York and yet more adventures, and this vibrant work, full of seaside breezes and sun, remains a distillation of this brief yet pivotal time in Matta’s artistic development.
Susan L. Aberth, Associate Professor of Art History, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York