Overview
Roberto Matta 1911-2002 is the first institutional exhibition in Italy dedicated to the Chilean artist; it aims to portray his eclectic personality and the expression of a wide range of ideas and modes of knowledge: scientific, cultural and philosophical. A citizen of the world, visionary, multifaceted artist, painter and draughtsman, architect and sculptor, as well as a militant figure, Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (Santiago de Chile, 1911 – Civitavecchia, 2002) is certainly one of the most important artists of the twentieth century and, at the same time, among the least celebrated and represented figures in Italian museum collections.
The exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro is thus one of the projects of in-depth study, research and rediscovery of twentieth-century artists undertaken by the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Venezia, starting with the masterpieces held in its collection – in this case Alba sulla terra – Dawn on Earth – of 1952. The exhibition also recalls and renews his historical connection with Venice.
The exhibition intends to celebrate the brilliant and highly influential Chilean-born artist and his multifaceted creativity, expressed in the production of paintings, drawings, sculptures, architectural projects and design objects. Moreover, while constantly transgressing the borderline between abstraction and figuration, he exerted a fundamental influence on the American abstract expressionists of the 1940s. Above all, Matta’s work immediately presents itself as a participant in the world of science fiction, as a forerunner of an aesthetic in which the atmospheres of video games mix with those of street art.
Santa Croce, 2076, 30135 Venezia VE, Italy
