Roberto Matta

Galerie du Dragon, Paris

Cecilia Ayala, Paris

Mayor Gallery, London

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Nimes, Carré d'Art. Musée d'Art Contemporain, Matta: Dessins 1937 - 1989, 1990

Exhibition Catalogue, Bochum, Bochum Museum Collection of Art, L'Amérique Latine et le Surréalisme, 1993, no. 40, illustrated

Colour: the colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the tonality of the background is more uniform in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The cardboard is laid down on the backing board. Close inspection reveals a very small rub with associated loss towards the centre of the right edge. Very close inspection reveals a further minute rub towards the centre of the left edge. There is a short and shallow crease towards the centre-right of the lower edge. Visible only when unframed, some light rubbing is apparent to the top right and lower corners. All small and unobtrusive paper irregularities are in keeping with the artist's choice of medium.
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By 1944, the horrors of the Second World War had had a profound effect on the young Roberto Matta, who fled from Paris to New York in 1939 at the outbreak of the war. The artist’s distinct style of biomorphic compositions took on a new dimension when he started including strangely menacing and machine-like forms in his work to actively engage with the anxiety experienced by those affected by the conflict. Matta called these reflections ‘Social Morphologies’, indicating the deep concerns he had at the time. The strong lines and jagged edges of The Adventures of a Biomorphic Couple powerfully convey these feelings of desperation and fear, making the present work a dramatic example of Matta’s remarkable oeuvre.

In 1937, while working on the design of the Spanish Republican pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition, Matta saw Picasso’s Guernica, an experience that had a high impact on his work afterwards. Indeed, the two arm-like shapes that culminate in an open mouth in The Adventures of a Biomorphic Couple seem to raise in an act of despair and are strongly reminiscent of the Spaniard’s political statements. Dark lines violently cross the background of the composition imbuing the work with tension and movement. Having trained as an architect - he worked as a draughtsman at Le Corbusier’s studio in Paris for two years - Matta’s work is infused with his ability to depict multi-dimensional spaces, which he then populated with anthropomorphic shapes to create psychologically charged landscapes. During his stay in Paris Matta also became well established within the Surrealists, contributing illustrations for André Breton’s anti-Fascist magazine Minotaure. Upon his arrival in the United States Matta became part of the émigré colony of artists that escaped the terror of the war. Created in the midst of this traumatic experience, The Adventures of a Biomorphic Couple attests to the artist’s ability to convey his apocalyptic visions by means of his designs, visions that serve as powerful commentaries of the history of the Twentieth Century.