Matta

RARE BOOK

Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 3 October - 16 December 1985

In the years leading up to the Second World War, the Chilean painter Roberto Matta (1911-2002) trained in Paris, a city in which he subsequently resided almost constantly from the early 1950s. An artist who was essential to the "historical development of modern art", Matta fascinated both Marcel Duchamp and younger artists such as Erro.

However, the dispersal of Matta's major paintings to numerous, often American, museums, the ease with which the emphasis is often placed on the man's commitments, and the absence of any monograph have meant that the work is often misunderstood in its entirety.

This catalogue of the major retrospective devoted to Matta by the Centre Pompidou in 1985 attempts to restore Matta to his rightful place through an extensive critical apparatus. The book documents the works exhibited: sixty-eight paintings, often of very large dimensions, one hundred and forty drawings and one sculpture.