Matta

After abandoning work in Le Corbusier's Parisian studio in 1935, Matta committed himself full-time to pursue his career as an artist. In 1937, he met Picasso, Dalí, Tanguy, Gordon Onslow Ford and other Surrealist artists. It was Dalí who arranged for Matta, with a letter of introduction written by García Lorca, to meet André Breton, who had purchased two of Matta's drawings and enthusiastically encouraged him to continue developing his technique. Matta was quickly heralded in a 1939 revue of Minotaure by Breton as the auspicious new talent in the Surrealist movement.

Once Matta was rid of the constraints imposed by his classical training as an architect, he dedicated himself to drawing with coloured crayons and experimented with mixed media paper collage. As early as 1936, Matta explored Surrealist themes in his drawings, and his interested in matehmatically-derived landscapes peaked. This interest was sparked by Man Ray's photographs which were based on the algebraic models of the mathematician Jules-Henri Poincare (1884-1912) which were published in Cahiers d'Art  (1936, No. 1-2). Man Ray's photographs had a profound impact on Matta, and the artist focused his energy on replicating those models in his drawings. In addition, Matta grew increasingly fascinated by the exploration of Euclidian spaces and depicting their disintegration.

Raw sexuality and violence are ever-present in Matta's oeuvre, ranging from subtle to overt passages. The present work was executed in 1942, during the height of World War II. Examination reveals that Matta has 'squared' his composition into nine parallel scenes that co-exist in the second dimension. However, the scenes are also tied together in the third dimension by solid and dotted lines. Several of the dismembered and beheaded nudes discernible in the drawing are echoed by punctuated shapes in the adjacent rectangular 'landscapes.' These scenes reveal a chaos that reflects Matta's growing anxiety over the global conflict and the atrocities being committed by humankind over which he had no control.