ArtNews

Arriving at Roberto Matta’s exhibition one expects to see a retrospective of this legendary surrealist’s work, only to discover a dazzling display of the Chilean painter’s most recent paintings. At 89 years, Matta’s work is amazingly fresh and vigorous.
While the Chilean artist was working for the famous Swiss architect Le Corbusier, he met André Breton — the father of surrealism. This meeting changed the course of his life when Breton examined his drawings and declared, “You are a surrealist!” Although he had only vague notions concerning surrealism; this emphatic declaration somehow rang true. He once described the sensation he felt as akin to the instinctual drive of “a turtle who breaks out of its eggshell on a sandy beach and immediately heads toward the sea.”
Matta became an active member of the surrealist group, forming close friendships with Breton and Yves Tanguy. He was among the many European artists and intellectuals such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Tanguy and Breton to flee France for the United States before the outbreak of World War II.
Based in New York, as the youngest member of the surrealist circle, he became an active participant in shows at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century gallery, where he exerted an influence on American artists Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Matta encouraged the artists who came to be known as the Abstract Expressionists to work toward spontaneity through some of the automatic techniques that had been used by the European surrealists. He spoke to them of his research and pictorial concerns in developing what he termed “new images of man.”
Some years ago, during the mid-’80s, Pedro Denoso, a fellow Chilean artist spoke of some experiments by Roberto Matta in computer imagery to create a vocabulary of interactive forms. He described Matta’s difficulty in working to control his hand movements for the limited dimensions of a computer screen. Not an easy task when one is used to using larger than life gestures for paintings on a monumental scale. The works in this superb show at Claude Bernard’s suggest that Matta has continued to work on these combined problems, resolving issues of space and content with a master’s touch.
Matta, l’Année des Trois 000 to July 29, Tue-Sat, Galerie Claude Bernard, 7 & 9, rue des Beaux-Arts, 6e, M° Odéon, tel.: 01.43.26.97.07..





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Matta examining a graphic project © Felix Rozen		MATTA a fresh look by Sandra Kwock-Silve Arriving at Roberto Matta’s exhibition one expects to see a retrospective of this legendary surrealist’s work, only to discover a dazzling display of the Chilean painter’s most recent paintings. At 89 years, Matta’s work is amazingly fresh and vigorous. While the Chilean artist was working for the famous Swiss architect Le Corbusier, he met André Breton — the father of surrealism. This meeting changed the course of his life when Breton examined his drawings and declared, “You are a surrealist!” Although he had only vague notions concerning surrealism; this emphatic declaration somehow rang true. He once described the sensation he felt as akin to the instinctual drive of “a turtle who breaks out of its eggshell on a sandy beach and immediately heads toward the sea.” Matta became an active member of the surrealist group, forming close friendships with Breton and Yves Tanguy. He was among the many European artists and intellectuals such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Tanguy and Breton to flee France for the United States before the outbreak of World War II. Based in New York, as the youngest member of the surrealist circle, he became an active participant in shows at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century gallery, where he exerted an influence on American artists Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Matta encouraged the artists who came to be known as the Abstract Expressionists to work toward spontaneity through some of the automatic techniques that had been used by the European surrealists. He spoke to them of his research and pictorial concerns in developing what he termed “new images of man.” Some years ago, during the mid-’80s, Pedro Denoso, a fellow Chilean artist spoke of some experiments by Roberto Matta in computer imagery to create a vocabulary of interactive forms. He described Matta’s difficulty in working to control his hand movements for the limited dimensions of a computer screen. Not an easy task when one is used to using larger than life gestures for paintings on a monumental scale. The works in this superb show at Claude Bernard’s suggest that Matta has continued to work on these combined problems, resolving issues of space and content with a master’s touch. Matta, l’Année des Trois 000 to July 29, Tue-Sat, Galerie Claude Bernard, 7 & 9, rue des Beaux-Arts, 6e, M° Odéon, tel.: 01.43.26.97.07..