MATTA Remembered in Valencia, Basque Country

Matta 1911-2011 is the title of the retrospective exhibit opened at the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), the most important exhibition on the Chilean artist in Spain over the last decade.

It comprises 32 paintings, some of them in large format, hailing from a variety of museums and private collections. There are quite unknown late works or of familiar and intimate character that can be seen thru May 1 and later on at the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts, the Basque Country, the Chilean artist’s place of origin.

The exhibit shows Matta’s early works in Paris all the way to his final pieces, all blended in a mixture of surrealism and abstract impressionism that, according to curator Marta Paz, explains how Matta was the original bridge between the French surrealists and the New York School, whom he met during his exile in this U.S. city since 1939.

As a forerunner of relationships among art, science and nature, and an advocate of the role played by the arts in the comprehensive development of the human being, in these artworks Matta bears out his social commitment, his linkage with Cuba and with several Arabic nations, with the Angola movement and with Chile during the administration of President Salvador Allende.