Matta@ Pace 57htSt.

I went to Pace 57th St with Gillian to see Matta’s paintings. Being a fan of his work there were a couple I liked but for the most part I like what I’ve seen in museum collections better. I first encountered his painting when I was a teenager at the Clarke Art Institute in Williamstown, Ma. They had one in their collection that went to the Williams College Museum and is still there. It is from the early 40’s .It’s similar to the one at MOCA-LA.and MOMA ‘s “Here, Sire Fire, Eat!. I am most attached to this period of his work. I like the sense of a vast space populated with some mysterious unknown
debris and most of all the holes in the atmosphere; the implication of the way to another half revealed world.While a lot of his work has a science fiction / surrealist primitive quality ,there are also some paintings which have imagery that looks like sculpture from New Ireland in the South Pacific. It was fun to see Matta’s paintings overlooking 57th St. after having read about him in the DeKooning biography by Stevens and Swan.

“The Europeans remained focused upon 57th St., where they gathered at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery and 51st St., where she lived. Even being at the occasional party together did little to close the gap between the surrealists and the other artists. At one party, deKooning said wryly,” I tried to tell Miro of my admiration for his work in English.
So you see, the contact was not such a thing.” There was one essential exception, however- one surrealist who had a an early and pronounced effect on Americans: Roberto Matta Echaurren( universally known as Matta). He had arrived in New York in 1939, before the great wave of emigres. An ambitious Chilean who had joined the surrealists in Paris several years earlier, Matta had been a protege of Breton’s, and, like Breton, came from a background that respected elegance, intellectual airs, and a certain hauteur. But he had never been fully accepted by the french surrealists. In New York, he was more open to the Americans than the Europeans were. It helped that he was young- in his early thirties- and spoke excellent English. Julien Levy wrote of Matta’s arrival:

Matta burst on the New York scene as if he considered this country a sort of dark continent, his Africa, where he could trade dubious wares, charm the natives and entertain scintillating disillusions. He was chock full of premature optimism and impatient disappointment; believing ardently in almost everything and in absolutely nothing, as he believed ardently and painfully in himself, which was the same thing,
everything and nothing.”

Among deKooning’s friends, Gorky was most influenced by the arrival of the surrealists- and , in particular, by Matta. Both by background and temperament, Gorky was naturally attracted to surrealist whimsy and lyrical reverie.” Gorky had surrealism innate in him because of his Armenian background, independently of the Surrealists,” said Robert Jonas.” They didn’t implant it in him. Fantasies and dream images have been present through the ages. And his Armenia abounded in them.” It was only natural, then, that Gorky was eager to mix with the surrealists themselves. When Matta arrived in 1939, Gorky quickly gravitated to him. By 1941, the two had become very close friends, even though Gorky begrudged Matta his swift success in America. Gorky’s lyrical landscapesof the early forties reflect Matta’s influence. Matta urged him to be freer- to dilute his paint in order to achieve an airier, more extemporaneous effect and to use any accidental drips to spark improvisations.”


Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren (b. 1911-d. 2002), “Matta,” was born in Santiago, Chile in 1911. He earned a degree in architecture from the Universidad Católica of Santiago in 1932. Matta apprenticed under Le Corbusier, working on projects such as the iconic proposal for Ville Radieuse and travelled extensively in Europe (1935-37). André Breton invited Matta to join the Surrealist circle in 1937 and Matta would participate in the Paris Exposicion International du Surrealism the following year. In 1939 Matta left Paris for New York, where his increasingly biomorphic paintings quickly attracted­­­ the attention of the New York School. Following a break with the Surrealists, Matta moved to Rome (1948), where he resided until 1955. He lived the rest of his life in Paris, London, and Tarquinia (an Etruscan city, north of Rome, in the Lazio region of Italy), yet maintained strong ties to Latin America. Matta’s involvement in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s included his strong support of president Salvador Allende in Chile.