Collection: Roberto Matta   1911 - 2002 

Roberto Matta, born in Santiago, Chile in 1911, originally trained as an architect but by 1933 he left for Paris to join its burgeoning artistic movement. Travelling between the USA and Europe, he soon became acquainted with the great artistic minds of his day: Magritte; Dali; Le Corbusier; and Breton, who first introduced him to the Paris Surrealist Movement and encouraged his work, spurring him on to produce pieces for Minotaure and other Surrealist journals.

Matta emigrated to the USA in 1938, where he stayed for the next ten years documenting the political anxiety in disturbed oil paintings. Though his name became more widely known, his ties to the Surrealists were severed following allegations that his affair with the wife of Arshile Gorky provoked his suicide. Expelled from the group, he lived between Europe and his homeland of South America, where he was a staunch defender of the country’s socialist movements. Matta died in 2002.