Roberto Matta

Beginning in the 1950s, the artist began to show a growing interest in the social-political events of the world and, particularly, in the Latin American reality. Throughout his career, Matta's artistic work underwent several mutations and ventured into different techniques. At the end of the 1930's he made his first large format oil paintings, a medium that would be the most characteristic of his production. For the creation of his initial works he used as a creative process the surrealist psychic automatism, seeking to bring to light the most recondite visions of the mind. In the 1950s, coinciding with his departure from surrealism, Matta developed a personal poetics. This coincides, on the one hand, with the appearance of figurative elements in his paintings and, on the other, with the intensification of his political consciousness. Since the 1970s, the presence of anthropomorphic figures in his images has become more and more frequent.