Roberto Matta, oil and clay on canvas, 1950s
Trained as an architect, Roberto Matta, born in Chile, developed into an artist. His unique style also expressed a lyrical abstraction with which he rather distanced himself from the surrealists and had a great influence on the later abstract expressionists. From an automatism, inspired by Dadaism and Freud’s psychoanalysis, he painted his subconscious imagination. WWII and other political-social atrocities led his oeuvre to a more rational imaging. His new formal language often combines elements of modern technology in which a figurative restlessness is noticeable.
Matta was more of a Basque researcher, because of the origins of his ancestors. His quest resulted in ‘Untitled’, a work that dates from the second half of the 1950s. The work was created in the period when the artist also mixed clay in his oil paint. His colourful artwork also achieved a depth variation in the representation of organic and cosmic lifeforms.
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