Word: matta
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Among the best living arguments for abstractionism is a 40-year-old Chilean named Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren, who calls himself simply "Matta." He lives with his wife and baby boy in a sunny apartment in Rome, paints only when he feels like it, and spends most of his leisure time grinding a rented hand organ on the streets. The mechanical music he grinds out gives Matta and his small boy assistant little profit, but Matta enjoys watching the faces of his listeners at the sidewalk cafes. Matta's latest show, opening next week in Manhattan, will...
...Matta has covered a lot of ground since he first started painting 15 years ago. Born and brought up in Santiago, he went to Paris in the '30s, where he studied architecture under Le Corbusier. He got no architectural commissions, soon switched to painting. His first paintings went back to the beginning of time: flames, stars and rocks, all gleaming in primordial darkness. When he first introduced human life, he painted men that were half lobster, half electric chair, tormenting each other. "We are all monsters," Matta says, with absolute conviction. But the new subject...