Word: matta
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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...
...Paul van Zeeland, Belgium; Lester Pearson, Canada; Gustav Rasmussen, Denmark; Count Carlo Sforza, Italy; Joseph Bech, Luxembourg; Dirk U. Stikker, The Netherlands; Jose Caeiro da Matta, Portugal; Halvard M. Lange, Norway; Thor Thors, Iceland...
Beyond these gadgets mankind swarms into what seems to be a decorated subway. There spectators gaze at large canvases by England's Leonora Carrington, Spain's Miro, Chile's Matta, all their works unframed, suspended in the air from wooden arms protruding from concave plywood walls. Every two minutes, while onlookers enjoy the spectacle, a roar as of an approaching train is heard, lights go out on one side of the gallery, pop on at the other...
Other surrealists whose pictures attracted crowds were Chilean-born Matta Echaurren, a specialist in vaguely visceral abstractions, and Leon Kelly, a U.S.-born newcomer, who had been painting odd dreams in Paris and Philadelphia for years, but had waited a long time to show them in broad daylight. Drawn with the care of an Italian Renaissance master, Kelly's tenuous vistas had a quietly horrifying aspect...