Chilean painter and sculptor Roberto Matta, often described as ”the last of the Surrealists”, has died at age 91, the Italian press reported on Sunday.
Matta, a driving force of abstract art, died overnight on Saturday at a hospital in Civitavecchia near Rome where he spent his last years.
Chilean President Ricardo Lagos announced three days of national mourning for Matta, who was born in Santiago in 1911.
After obtaining a degree in architecture at Santiago’s Catholic University, Matta went to Paris in 1934 to work with Swiss-born master architect Le Corbusier. There he met poets and artists including the Surrealists Salvador Dali and Andre Breton. In 1938 he moved to New York, producing some of his best works in the decade before he returned to Europe after World War II in 1948.
The Italian press paid homage to Matta with headlines including ”Visionary Genius” and ”Master of the Form”.
The Corriere della Sera daily said, ”Reality became a metaphor, and the figures he invented became epic individuals in a cosmic adventure, part surrealism and part futurism.”
The daily La Stampa described Matta as enamoured with modernity, even embracing computers as part of the creative process.
He was also admired for his evocation of the absurd. ”When I’m asked what it is I do, I reply
‘nothing’,” Matta told La Stampa in
one of his last interviews. ”People smile. But nobody thinks about the meaning of the word ‘nothing’. Nothing is the opposite of everything, and it is also the other name of every thing. If every thing has a form and a word, with ‘nothing’, the thing has neither
a word nor a form, and so nothing is only the moment when someone is busy.”
In Paris, French Culture Minister Jean-Jaques Aillagon described Matta as ”one of the last great exponents of the Surrealist adventure” and ”a committed artist and a militant who always
preserved his freedom.” – Sapa-AFP