Matta, Roberto | Colección

20^th Century Latin American

Born in Santiago de Chile in 1911, he studied architecture at Universidad Católica, Santiago de Chile, until 1931. After graduating, he settled in Paris, where he worked for Le Corbusier.

In the late 1930s, the artist decided to quit architecture in order to devote himself full time to painting. Nevertheless, before this decision, in 1937 he participated in the conception of the Spanish Pavilion for the International Exhibition of Paris with Josep Lluís Sert and Luis Lacasa. In addition, that year through Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí he met André Breton, who would introduce him to Surrealism, the prevailing movement of the time. His first works within this style were his Psychological Morphologies, created between 1938 and 1939.

In the 1940s he moved to the United States and had his first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. During his time in the USA he made contact with leading cultural circuits and became acquainted with some of the most significant art practitioners of the time. He created outstanding works, including The Earth is a Man, The Vertigo of Eros and The Onyx of Electra. After 1948 he moved between Europe, Chile and the United States. That year, after being expelled both from the Surrealist group and from the School of New York, he moved to Rome. He would remain there until the early 1970s, when he returned to his home country to work on collective murals with Brigada Ramona Parra. He was forced to leave Chile again after the dictator Augusto Pinochet came to power. In 1973 he organised an exhibition in Bologna against Pinochet’s regime.

His work was widely acclaimed, earning distinctions including the Gold Medal in Visual Arts in Spain in 1985, Chile’s National Art Award in 1990, the Prince of Asturias Award and the Herbert Boeckl Award in 1992, and the 1995 Praemium Imperiale.

Roberto Matta