Roberto Matta

L’homme descend du signe, 1975

The Chilean artist Roberto Matta is widely considered one of the foremost figures of the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements. After studying architecture in Chile, Matta journeyed to Paris, where he became associated with figures like Salvador Dalí and André Breton, though his early works of the 1940s were also deeply influenced by Marcel Duchamp. In those years, Matta strived to paint what he termed "psychological morphologies," visual renderings of human interiority.

"His new project, he said, was to use his painting to 'express what modern life feels like.'"

Justin Spring

This aim was upended by World War II and the Cold War, which transformed Matta's mode of thinking about the purpose of his work. Those events and their aftermaths catalyzed Matta to take a more politically minded approach to painting. The artist once said, "I believe that before anything else we need an image of society, an image of economics, to help us to see where we are. Just as we need to refer to maps to locate ourselves in space, we have to find a way of depicting our position in history."

Created after Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup in Chile, L'homme descend du signe (1975) reflects Matta's changed view of artmaking. The monumental work features an orbit of ineffable machines, apparatuses, and other forms amid a background of rich purples and hazy pinks. The artist does not reveal the precise uses of these madcap, intricate inventions that populate his composition, but he imbues each idiosyncratic mechanism with an energy all its own. Matta's churning machines exemplify the grotesque and miraculous results of technological innovation.

"I believe that before anything else we need an image of society, an image of economics, to help us to see where we are."

Roberto Matta

Engaged with Picasso's large-scale painting Guernica and politically resonant works by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and other Mexican muralists, the otherworldly scene in L'homme descend du signe meditates on the origins of human consciousness, the arc of industrial change, and the effects of capitalism. Key to interpreting the painting's big ideas about evolution is the wordplay in its title: the artist has replaced the word "singe," meaning "monkey," with "signe," meaning "sign." For Matta, semiotics played a role in parsing questions about humanity's development, progress, and fate.

"In his combination of the recognizable and the abstract, of the ancient and the futuristic, of the cosmic and the mythical, Matta never shirked from applying a cultural and art-historical awareness to his paintings..."

Justin Spring

As Justin Spring wrote in 2011 on the occasion of Matta: A Centennial Celebration, an exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York featuring L'homme descend du signe, "In his combination of the recognizable and the abstract, of the ancient and the futuristic, of the cosmic and the mythical, Matta never shirked from applying a cultural and art-historical awareness to his paintings, particularly in his middle and late career, as his imagery underwent an evolution that he ascribed, simply enough, to 'a change in the hallucinatory mechanism.'"

"Resistance is in each of us. We resist by exercising our creativity. That is true poetry—when we seek new comparisons, other ways of looking and conceiving of things."

Roberto Matta

In addition to Pace's presentation marking the centennial of Matta's birth, L'homme descend du signe has been exhibited at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid in 1999; the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Spain in 2011; the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain in 2011; and Joseph Nahmad Contemporary, New York in 2012. Critic Ken Johnson wrote in The New York Times of Pace's 2011 exhibition, "As this revelatory show proves, [Matta] continued to evolve as a painter and to produce giant-scale canvases with terrific panache into the late 1990s."

"Just as we need to refer to maps to locate ourselves in space, we have to find a way of depicting our position in history."

Roberto Matta

To inquire about this work or other works by Roberto Matta, please email us at inquiries@pacegallery.com.

Roberto Matta

Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, "Matta," is considered one of the great Surrealists and is widely acclaimed for his critical—and catalytic—influence on the development of Abstract Expressionism and on his contemporaries, including Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. Fascinated by the fluctuating energy of the universe and rejecting the notion of a single vantage point, he created paintings and drawings with complex, dynamic space eventually incorporating social commentary into his work through figurative imagery.

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Past

Art Basel

Sep 20 – Sep 26, 2021

Sep 20 – Sep 26, 2021

Past, Roberto Matta, Art Basel Unlimited, Sep 20, 2021