Matta

Executed in 1944, Le Glaive et la parole originated during the war years, which Matta spent in the United States, having left Europe after the outbreak of World War II. His first solo exhibition opened in New York in 1940 to great acclaim, and he was soon recognised as a major influence both in the Surrealist circle and on the younger Abstract Expressionist artists. Matta experienced deep anxiety during the war years, and the horror of holocaust and the prospect of atomic war were manifested in the drawings he produced during that time. Executed in 1944, Le Glaive et la parole is an excellent example of Matta’s poignant display of emotions as they are transferred onto paper. As Peter Selz has explained, "The spaces in Matta’s pictures in the mid-forties seem more definite, but are filled with pitfalls and ambiguities… His spaces now are populated by strange anthropomorphic beings, animistic machines, Duchampian mechanical monsters. His pictures had to become larger, because these terrifying beings need space to carry out their hallucinatory actions and horrifying demonology" (P. Selz, "Matta," in Roberto Matta (exhibition catalogue), Tasende Gallery, La Jolla, California, 1980, p. 8).

Like his contemporary Picasso (fig. 1), Matta possessed a remarkable ability to convey his apocalyptic visions through the manipulation of familiar forms and strong contours. In Le Glaive et la parole, the emaciated body of Matta’s anthropomorphic figure suggests the desperation many people experienced during the war years. The taut sinews in the upraised arm and the firm grasp of the dagger contrast sharply with the violent thrust of the open mouth, resulting in a sense of movement which defies the two-dimensionality of the paper. The emotional content of the present work, combined with Matta’s ability to transcend the limits of his planar surface, convey his expert draftsmanship and his importance as a historical commentator.

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Taureau et cheval, 1934, pencil on paper, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg