Roberto Matta, surrealist genius and forerunner of abstract expressionism: a monographic exhibition for him in Bologna

A monographic exhibition dedicated to one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Roberto Sebastián Matta (Santiago de Chile, 1911 - Civitavecchia, 2002), and titled Roberto Sebastián Matta, is scheduled from May 5 to July 31, 2018, at the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m. in Bologna. The Forms of Dream. Through paintings, mixed media works and bronze sculptures, the curators, Franco and Roberto Calarota, trace the parabola of an artist who was among the protagonists of Surrealism in Paris and helped provide a decisive impetus, in New York, for the birth ofabstract expressionism. The exhibition starts precisely from his move to Paris in the 1930s: in the French capital, Matta came into contact with Federico García Lorca, Salvador Dalí and André Breton, and his encounters (especially the one with Breton) pushed him to embrace the surrealist instances, of which he became one of the main promoters.

In France, Matta began to create in his Inscapes (fantastical interior landscapes, or “psychic morphologies”), made beginning in 1938, the year he presented his works at theExposition International du Surrèalisme. The Paris experience was short-lived, because Matta, at the outbreak of World War II, took up Marcel Duchamp ’s suggestion and moved to New York, where his works filled with fantastic imagery fascinated young artists, such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, who would later give birth to abstract expressionism. And New York would dedicate a major retrospective to Matta in 1957, held at MoMA: by that time the artist had already achieved international fame. Among the works from that period, on display in Bologna is La lumière de l’edore: a canvas where, the presentation of the exhibition states, “the signs, colors and figures trigger questions and interrogations and do not close themselves to an unambiguous interpretation, thus responding to the attempt to transpose the mysteries of the mind onto the canvas. The bright tones of the canvas depart from the darker ones often found in the previous decade, torn by the social and political upheavals of the War to which Matta was never indifferent.”

Alongside the oils, mixed-media works are also on display, especially those on the theme of the automobile, one of the main strands of Matta’s production, and sculpture in brone, “poised between totems that seem to have emerged from ancient civilizations and mythological characters on the edge of the imaginary in which epochs, cultures and suggestions merge, giving rise to a timeless space.” It is precisely Roberto Sebastián Matta’s sculptural production that is gaining increasing interest from collectors, critics and the public: his sculptures were also exhibited in a collateral event of the 2015 Venice Biennale, and the same had happened at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in 2013 (both events were aimed at exploring sculpture in Matta’s production). The Bologna exhibition also enjoys added value since the curators (as well as founders of the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore) were linked by a friendship with Matta.

The exhibition opens Monday from 4 to 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon and 4 to 7:30 p.m. Admission is free. For more information you can visit the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore website.

Pictured: Roberto Sebastián Matta, La lumière de l’edore (1958; oil on canvas, 115 x 150 cm; Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m., Bologna/Milan).

Roberto Matta, surrealist genius and forerunner of abstract expressionism: a monographic exhibition for him in Bologna

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