Roberto Matta

ROBERTO MATTA (Santiago, Chile, 1911 – Civitavecchia, Italy, 2002).
Untitled, ca. 1975.
Color lithograph on paper, print no. 72/90.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 65 x 50.5 cm.

This lithograph belongs to Roberto Matta’s mature period and condenses into the graphic medium some of the most recognizable features of his unique surrealist universe. Against an intense blue background, two anthropomorphic figures with mutable anatomy are depicted, constructed using black outlines and broad areas of color. The deformation of the bodies, the tension between the organic and the mechanical, and the spatial freedom all draw on the vocabulary Matta developed through his research into so-called “psychological morphology,” transforming it here into an image of great chromatic immediacy. The artist also produced an extensive body of graphic work, a field that played a prominent role in his career.

Roberto Matta was one of the great innovators of 20th-century painting. Associated with André Breton’s circle alongside artists such as Duchamp and Tanguy, he actively participated in the development of the Surrealist language, and during his stay in New York in the 1940s, he exerted a decisive influence on the emergence of Abstract Expressionism. Throughout his career, he exhibited at leading institutions and galleries in Europe and the United States and was the subject of major retrospectives. His work is part of the collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.