Roberto Matta

(Santiago de Chile, 1911 – Civitavecchia, Rome, 2002)

La imposible posibilidad (The Impossible Possibility)

1974

oil on canvas

93.7 x 100.2 cm

Inv. no. P01038

BBVA Collection Spain



A Chilean author active in the United States, Italy and France, Roberto Matta is one of the key figures of Surrealism and representative of automatic painting. He travelled to Europe and met some of the great artists of the time, such as Henry Moore (1898-1986), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and, in Spain, Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), whose Surrealist teachings would have a profound influence on practically his whole career as an artist.

Politics and revolution were to the fore in his production from the sixties and seventies, connecting his art to his commitment to the social movements emerging from the historical events he was forced to live through. This is particularly the case of this canvas, directly connected with Matta’s protest and commitment with his country of birth. The piece was exhibited in 1974 at Galería Aele next to other works dedicated to the Colombian poet Jorge Zalamea.

The canvas - related to Prélèvement automatique also in the BBVA Collection - is an excellent example of Matta’s highly personal style in the 1960s. The artist fuses, in gradations of oranges and greens, what seems to be the mechanism of a machine outlined in greys and whites. Although the imprint of Surrealism is still patent, the artist’s attempt to represent movement and speed through geometric forms, although not reaching abstraction, reveals a certain connection with Futurism.