Matta (1911-2002)

Gordon Onslow-Ford, Mill Valley (acquired from the artist in 1938)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (on extended loan)
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Latin American Art, May 31, 2001, lot 12, illustrated in color
Sale: Christie's, New York, Latin American Sale, May 28, 2003, lot 28, illustrated in color
Sale: Christie's, London, Post War & Contemporary Art, July 1, 2008, lot 164, illustrated in color

New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Boston, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Matta, September 10, 1957-March 2, 1958, no. 1, pp. 3, 10, illustrated p. 34
Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Sebastián Matta, 15 former av tvivel (15 forms of doubting), October 24, 1959, pp. 5, 27
Waltham, Massachussets, Brandeis University, Rose Art Museum, Matta, The First Decade, May 9-June 20, 1982, no. 2, pp. 21, 41, illustrated in color p. 44
Beverly Hills, Latin American Masters; Mexico City, Galería López Quiroga, Roberto Matta, Paintings and Drawings 1937-1959, April 5-July 31, 1997, no. 4, illustrated in color
Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Are Reina Sofía; Barcelona, Fundació Caixa Catalunya, Matta, January 21-April 5, 1999, p. 87, illustrated in color p. 170

André Breton, "Des tendences les plus récentes de la peinture surréaliste." Minotaure, No. 12-13, Paris, 1939, p. 26, illustrated in color
William Stanley Rubin, "Matta," New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1957, reprinted in Matta: El Mediterráneo o el verbo América, Madrid, September-October, 1983, p. 23
William Stanley Rubin, Dada and Surrealist Art, New York, 1968, no. 361, p. 346, 351, illustrated p. 486
Germana Ferrari Matta, Matta, "Entretiens Morphologiques," Notebook no. 1, 1936-1944, London 1987, p. 78, illustrated in color p. 244, 263

This canvas is not lined but there is a reinforcement on the reverse in the center of the left side addressing an upside down "L" shaped break in the canvas measuring approximately two by one inches. The restoration and repair have been very well carried out and no further restoration is recommended. In the upper center in the light colored background there is a very thin group of tiny retouches addressing what appears to be a scratch and which runs for approximately nine inches in length. The remainder of the painting is in beautiful state and the painting should be hung as is. This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Morphology of Desire was the first painting by Matta to be reproduced in colour.  It appeared in the Surrealist Review Miotaure No. 12-13 in 1939. 

At the time Morphology of Desire was painted, Matta had been reading the French art critic Elie Faure who proposed the theory that in every masterpiece, there were four main components: (1) a natural object; (2) an animal; (3) a human being; (4) some form of human creation.

Morphology of Desire features: (1) a stone, situated bottom right; (2) a bird, upper right; (3) a human personage on the left; (4) an architectural construction, center bottom.  Matta has depicted these four entities and their inter-relations in the marvelous space time of what he called Psychological Morphology.1

A note on the techniques in the painting of Morphology of Desire:

First, the canvas was automatically covered with a thin ground of warm and cool greys of varying tones.  Then Matta placed small quantities of different colours next to each other along the blade of a palette knife and made a rapid palette knife gesture on the canvas.  This was repeated with different colours for each of the four components of the painting.

Over the next week and even months, the next stage of the painting took place.  The painting was contemplated and the physical inter-relationships between the four objects and the whole were modeled as they appeared with brushes and fingers and slowly and inevitably took on form.

1) The stone is shown in its life-span as it became transformed from gaseous, to liquid to solid state, being shaped by the give and take from the environment near and far.

2) The bird is shown in song, in silence in flight, in nesting , in migration, in relation to other forms of life.  The life of a bird shown in a single form.

3) The pink and red human being shows a drama of human relations, the interaction of matter and mind, the continual dance of events with other uman beings and Mother Earth.  All told in a single form.

4) The architectural construction is shown as an essence of straight lines and auras in impact with the environment and human evolution.

Finally there are the relationships between the four components of the painting that in this space-time become visible and take on subtle forms.  As consciousness grows over the years, so does the mystery of Morphology of Desire.

The technical aspect of Matta's palette knife gestures of paint were an immediate influence on Action Painting and Abstract Expressionism that appeared in New York City in the 1940s.  The subtle poetry and the intimation of other realities in depth, that to be seen, require contemplation are now being appreciated by more and more people.

Matta would probably have spoken of Morphology of Desire using other words.  This painting has been a presence in my mind ever since it was painted, and I hope my words have come close to its spirit.

Gordon Onslow-Ford

Bishop Pine Preserve, Inverness, CA

April 5, 2001

1 Matta, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Museé national d'art moderne,

Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 1985, pp. 28-30, p. 91.

 

 

After receiving a degree in architecture from the Unversidad Católica in Chile, Matta settled in Paris in 1935, working in the studio of Le Corbusier.  It was while working in the architect's studio that Matta's interest in Surrealism intensified.  Ultimately, he gave up his work as an architect and devoted himself full-time to experimenting with collage, as well as drawing with colored crayons, graphite and colored pencils.  Once Matta was rid of the constraints imposed by his rigid architectural training, his fluid line developed to create mesmerizing works.  His depictions of mathematically derived landscapes became eloquent vistas based on the algebraic models of the mathematician Jules-Henri Poincaré (1884-1912), that were published in Cahiers d'Art.

The work of photographers Blossfeldt and Renger-Patsch, who captured the cell during mitosis, also caught the attention of Matta.  To the uninitiated, these photographs went beyond encapsulating the gelatinous minute life forms suspended in plasma, to mirror the vast expanses of the universe.  Matta's artistic exploration of these images created celestial worlds that depict the conception, gestation, birth, life and death of a star exploding in a supernova in the same space-time.  Conversely, these worlds assume microscopic proportions, as incubated genetic material replicating in mucus membranes. Matta's quest to capture metamorphosis and to depict objects in transformation in the same space and time has continued to remain a preoccupation throughout his prolific career.

In 1938, at the suggestion of Gordon Onslow-Ford, Matta attempted to paint with oils.  Matta's early paintings were executed using some of the techniques and ideas of other Surrealists with whom he was in contact.  One such technique was automatism, the automatic drawing or painting that is achieved by the unconscious movement of the artist's hand, pencil or brush working faster than the mind can think.  Each of the Surrealists experimented with and ultimately developed their own form of automatism.

By the late 1930s, new images inspired by the automatic processes were appearing in the works of the Surrealists, the fumages of Wolfgang Paalen, the decalomania of Oscar Dominguez, the colleages of Gordon Onslow-Ford, and the grattages of Esteban Frances, among others.

The Surrealists dedicated their art to making a liason between the waking state and the world of dreams.  In 1938 Matta took Surrealism a step further, by depicting the world beyond dreams and the waking state.  He called this world Psychological Morphology.  The term Psychological Morphology describes an adventure into an alternative reality with its own space-time.

In conjunction with the Surrealists André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, André Masson, Matta and Gordon Onslow-Ford left Paris for the United States during World War II.  It was the arrival of these exiles and émigrés that heralded the transition of the center of the art world to New York, where it remains today.  Artistic production was spurred by New York art patrons Peggy Guggenheim and Gertrude Stein, who facilitated the flow of ideas between the recent émigrés and their American compatriots.

Long overlooked within the study of this wartime creative atmosphere has been the significant contribution made by the automatism to the development of Action Painting and Abstract Expressionism in the United States.  Post-War artists such as Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline are deeply indebted to the work of the Surrealists.  Matta's masterpiece Morphology of Desire and other works both drawn and painted in Britanny and Paris during 1938-39 are the building blocks whose spirit and technique inspired these painters as well as others who would later become monumental artists in their own right.