Matta (1911-2002)

Galerie du Dragon, Paris (acquired from the artist)
Isaac and Betty Abadí, Caracas (acquired in 1978)
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, California

Santiago de Chile, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile, November 11-December 30, 1991; Caracas, Museo de Bellas Artes, February 16-April 19, 1992, Matta UNI-VERSO 11-11-11, no. 44, illustrated in color; also illustrated on the cover

This work is ready to hang. Each section is painted on canvas mounted on pulp board. Each one of the boards is flat and stable. There is no damage to the panel or the method of adhesion. In one or two cases there are small spots of loss and wear mainly in the corners. Some of the screw holes will need to be slightly reinforced, overall this still succeeds in its original concept. The panels, when connected, move/function accordingly.
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Upon Matta’s arrival in New York in the Fall of 1939 he along with his other surrealist-refugee friends—Tanguy, Seligmann, Breton, and Duchamp amongst others—made their presence immediately known within the American art world. It was Matta, however, who made the definitive mark crowned by the art critic Rosamund Frost in 1942 as the “dynamo of things to come.” [1] Matta, the eternal rebel, created commanding, visionary works throughout his prolific artistic career exposing and offering us, the audience, worlds unlike anything seen before—from his exquisite and mystical Psychological Morphologies and later on the much more experimental multi-paneled constructions, such as the present work shown here Cubo abierto (1977).

Upon Matta’s departure from New York in 1949 to Italy and eventually France, the works executed in the “fifty-plus years post-New York” regularly visit the concept of “shifting space and evolving movement” through the appearance of geometric, cube-like shapes that seem to dissolve into limitless landscapes of bold and shocking colors.[2] Matta, who was trained as an architect and worked in the office of Le Corbusier in the mid-1930s, began to vigorously showcase his original, formal training in these works. With time, his technique progressively matures; his gestures are freer, liberated and to a certain degree become more playful.  Additionally, it is during this period of architectural exploration that Matta is emboldened to consider going beyond the flat canvas by taking the viewer under serious consideration as the protagonist and creator of these multiple-dimensions. In 1966 he revisits the conceptual project of a painted cube, first explored in the late 1940s/early 1950s, in a more advanced and daring format. It is during this same year that Matta presents L’Honni aveuglant, at Iolas Gallery, which was later acquired by Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1972. A culmination of three decades of painting, the monumental five-paneled cube structure is one of his most daring, it not merely asks but demands the viewer to physically enter and feel completely immersed by this cube structure.

Executed in 1977, Cubo abierto  represents a key example of Matta’s progressive exploration of and fascination with the open cube. Although compact in size, the dramatization of the possibilities of space and limitless dimensions are no less daring than his earlier 1966 proposal. Here, he constructs a cube out of six canvas panels, each side of the panel representing a new “environment”. Although systematic and mechanical in appearance, the varying panels create a sudden sense of surprise and unpredictability. For Matta the relationship between the cube and us as the viewer-participant is an absolute abandonment of a traditional single-planed perspective and awakens a new sensibility of space and opportunity of dimension. As Matta himself remarked, “rather than possessing the painting [the viewer] is possessed by it, bombarded from all sides."


[1] Martica Sawin, “Matta in New York”, Matta, Centenario.11.11.11., (exhibition catalogue) Santiago de Chile, 2011, p. 188
[2] Mary Schneider Enriquez, “Roberto Matta: International Provocateur”,  Matta, Making the Invisible Visible (exhibition catalogue), McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2004, p. 37