This exhibition will focus on Chilean-born artist Roberto Sebastian Matta's time in the United States from 1939-1948. During this decade, Matta developed some of the most unique and powerful works of his career, fusing surrealist practices of automatism with a wide-ranging approach to painting in which abstraction and figuration increasingly intertwined. He also helped forge important links between the European Surrealists in exile in the United States and a generation of younger American artists who would become known as abstract expressionists, with lasting consequences for the development of their work. Approximately eighteen paintings and twenty drawings will be included in the exhibition, among them two key works from the MCA's Collection. This exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with essays by the co-curators and William Rubin, Curator Emeritus at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It will open at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and travel to the Miami Art Museum prior to its presentation in Chicago.
Funding
Matta in America: Paintings and Drawings of the 1940s was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. This exhibition is supported by Herta and Paul Amir, Audrey M. Irmas, Northern Trust Corporation, and Muriel Kallis Newman.
Air transportation is provided by American Airlines, the official airline of the Museum of Contemporary Art.