Considered one of the major late exponents of Surrealism, Roberto Matta practiced architecture for many years, although he made his name as a painter, a muralist, a sculptor and also as a poet. After finishing his studies, he travelled throughout Europe, where he became acquainted with some of the great artists of the time, among them Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) but very specially Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), whose surrealist teachings would prove crucial in shaping his own art.

This painting, connected to La imposible posibilidad—also in the BBVA Collection—is an excellent example of Matta’s highly personal style in the 1960s. Disconnected from the prevailing trends of the time, he developed a language of his own, defined by a heightened poetic intensity which was further enhanced by the incorporation of symbols allusive to war and revolution, evincing his political awareness. In these compositions, Matta resorted to automatism to underscore the notion of the subconscious, and began to incorporate biomorphic figures charged with playful content, demonstrating that Surrealism was still alive in the works he created around this time.

The work in hand was probably executed on a canvas without a stretcher, which was typical of Matta’s way of working, which involved painting large-scale pieces that he then divided, mounted and framed individually, thus producing several pieces in one go.