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Matta: ‘Fictions’ at the Museum Frieder Burda

Matta - L´Impencible

Matta
L´Impencible, 1957
oil on canvas, 82,5 x 103 cm
private collection
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Matta: Fictions at the Museum Frieder Burda The museum Frieder Burda presents about 30 large-scale works by Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta in a focused retrospective. From January 19 until June 2, 2013.]]>

Source: Museum Frieder Burda

Matta was one of the most influential painters of the 20th century, and his works can be seen in museums around the world. He was in close contact with Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, with whom he began exhibiting in 1938. Trained as an architect, Matta developed his ideas on the relationship of space to human beings while working at the Paris studio of Le Corbusier. In the 1940s, while living in exile in New York City, Matta anticipated important developments in Abstract Expressionism. After the Second World War, his machine figures reflected political and social events of the day. Matta’s painting style shifts between figuration and abstraction, creating cosmic fictional spaces that reflect contemporary history. His often overwhelmingly large paintings anticipated the fantastic worlds found in works of science fiction and computer games.

This exhibition illustrates the cosmopolitan life Matta led between Santiago de Chile, Paris, Rome and New York and demonstrates his amazing relevance to contemporary painting.

“Matta. Fictions” brings together works from all of Matta’s creative periods, including three-dimensional installations in several parts that encompass the view and pull him or her into the fictional space. Matta’s architectural vision finds its expression in the space between the image and the viewer in such installations. The curving walls of the exhibition will reflect his concept of image space which is based on the organic curves and hollows found in the human body.

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Matta: 'Fictions' at the Museum Frieder Burda