vetiver

Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Erchaurren surprises us once more by the grandeur of his massive works and his ability to “orchestrate the entire cosmos” on large canvases.  It’s all on view at the Pace Gallery in a Centennial Celebration that focuses on the artist’s later years and features 14 paintings, many of which have never been seen before outside of Europe, and the largest of which measures 27 x 13 feet. Case in point: Architecture du temps (1999) is a wall-size abstract-expressionist work of cathedral-like majesty that displays a nostalgia with architectural design, a layered cosmic view of the universe featuring aerial perspectives, docking space stations and UFO’s, and a layer of gestural “action-painting” like splatters and drippings suggesting white smog. Matta looked to the future from atop a tall ladder and discovered the kind of psychedelic science-fiction dream that only a contemporary shaman could navigate, and then charted the “topography of the mind”. Matta was interested in new architecture when he first came to Paris in 1934, and while working for Le Corbusier he met with the likes of Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, Duchamp, Magritte and Moore. At his aunt’s house in Madrid he also met Pablo Neruda and Salvador Dali, along with Federico Garcia Lorca, whose assassination two years later greatly disturbed him, causing him to write a script that displayed his leftist sensibilities.His artistic revelation, and transition from architect to artist came while working on the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1937.  It was there that he saw Picasso’s Guernica and decided to devote himself solely to art. He showed his drawings to a friend, Gordon Onslow-Ford who in turn was so inspired that he followed in Matta’s innovative footsteps. Read the entire article @
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/reviewed/matta-a-centennial-celebration