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“4” “2”-DAY 23 November
v.7.a0 |
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Died on 23 November 1682: Claude Gellée
“Le Lorrain”, French painter born in 1602, one
of the great masters of ideal-landscape painting (often containing classical
ruins and figures) — Claude's career spans almost the entire century - his earliest datable works are from the end of the 1620s - and he witnessed almost all the main changes of artistic style during his long stay in Rome. Some details of his early life are known, but they add up to very little in the search for his artistic origins. Orophaned at 12, he left his native Lorraine for Rome in 1613, Claude spent the next decade of his life learning his art. Nothing survives from this period. In 1626 he returned to Lorraine and was apprenticed to Claude Deruet for one year. After completing this one-year apprenticeship he returned to Rome. Claude's earliest surviving pictures have usually been dated to around 1630, although he did not begin to keep accurate records until the mid-1630s. Then he decided to keep a record of every picture he painted, in the form of the Liber veritatis, in which, after he had completed a painting, he made a careful drawing of the composition and noted the buyer on the back. He thus documented some two hundred pictures over almost fifty years. Claude's achievement as a pioneer in landscape painting has earned him a place in the pantheon of art history. He was widely imitated for almost two centuries, and therefore often produces in the popular imagination a feeling of déjà-vu, especially in his best-known compositions. Claude's powers of innovation were in fact limited — he concentrated on a very narrow range of tones in a very narrow landscape type. Once he had perfected his technique, he did not develop much further deliberately; his work was too eagerly sought after by powerful patrons for him to need to do so. — Claude Lorrain, byname of Claude Gellée, French artist best known for, and one of the greatest masters of, ideal-landscape painting, an art form that seeks to present a view of nature more beautiful and harmonious than nature itself. The quality of that beauty is governed by classical concepts, and the landscape often contains classical ruins and pastoral figures in classical dress. The source of inspiration is the countryside around Rome - the Roman Campagna - a countryside haunted with remains and associations of antiquity. The practitioners of ideal landscape during the 17th century, the key period of its development, were artists of many nationalities congregated in Rome. Later, the form spread to other countries. Claude, whose special contribution was the poetic rendering of light, was particularly influential, not only during his lifetime but, especially in England, from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. Life and works Claude Lorrain, usually called simply Claude in English, was born of poor parents at Chamagne, a village in the then independent duchy of Lorraine. He received little schooling, and, according to his first biographer, Joachim von Sandrart, was brought up to be a pastrycook. His parents seem to have died when he was 12 years old, and, within the next few years, he traveled south to Rome. In Rome he was trained as an artist by Agostino Tassi, a landscapist and the leading Italian painter of illusionistic architectural frescoes. At what stage and for how long he was apprenticed is uncertain, and, either before or during this period, Claude probably spent two years in Naples with Goffredo Wals, another pupil of Tassi. Tassi taught Claude the basic vocabulary of his art - landscapes and coast scenes with buildings and little figures - and gave him a lasting interest in perspective and, thus, in landscape painting. In 1625, according to his second biographer, Filippo Baldinucci [1624 – 01 Jan 1696], Claude left Tassi and went back to Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, where he worked for a year as assistant to Claude Deruet on some frescoes (since destroyed) in the Carmelite church. But, in the winter of 1626-1627, Claude returned to Rome and settled there permanently. He never married, but he had a daughter, Agnese [1653-1713], who lived in his house; also staying with him were a student, Giovanni Domenico Desiderii, from 1633 to c. 1656, and two nephews, Jean from c. 1663 and Joseph from c. 1680. In 1633, to further his career, Claude joined the painters' Academy of Saint-Luke. Little is known of his personality. He took no part in public events and lived essentially for his work. In his early period he mixed with other artists, especially those who were of northern European origin like himself, but in his 40s he apparently became more solitary. He remained on good terms with Nicolas Poussin, another French master of the ideal landscape, yet there was hardly any artistic contact between them. Although ill-educated in the formal sense (both his spelling and counting were eccentric, and he wrote haltingly in French and Italian), Claude was not the ignorant peasant of legend. The subjects of his paintings show that he had an adequate knowledge of the Bible, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the Aeneid. He had a special feeling for the country, but his mode of life was that of a bourgeois. Industrious, amiable, and shrewd, surrounded by his modest household, and keenly sought after as an artist, he pursued a successful career into old age and amassed a comfortable fortune. No work by Claude survives from before 1627, and he probably did not take up landscape until after that date. His first dated work is Landscape with Cattle and Peasants. Painted in 1629, it hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Soon after, in the early 1630s, he rose to fame. He did this partly on the basis of two or three series of landscape frescoes (all but one, a small frieze in the Crescenzi palace at Rome, are now lost), but, according to Baldinucci, he achieved renown chiefly because of his skill in representing those conditions of nature which produce views of the sun, particularly on seawater and over rivers at dawn and evening. By about 1637 - with commissions from Pope Urban VIII, several cardinals, and Philip IV of Spain - Claude had become the leading landscape painter in Italy. In 1635-1636 he began the Liber Veritatis, a remarkable volume containing 195 drawings carefully copied by Claude after his own paintings, with particulars noted on the backs of the drawings indicating the patron for whom, or the place for which, the picture was destined, and, in the second half of the book, the date. Although most paintings made before 1635 and a few painted afterward are not included, the Liber Veritatis was compiled throughout in chronological order and thus forms an invaluable record of Claude's artistic development, as well as revealing his circle of patrons. Undertaken, as he told Baldinucci, as a safeguard against forgery of his paintings, the book gradually became Claude's most precious possession and a work of art in itself; he may also have used it as a stock of motifs for new compositions. Claude's patrons were international and predominantly aristocratic, the majority being French or Italian noblemen. He was a fastidious worker and an expensive artist. He always worked on commission, at first sometimes selling his paintings through agents, but later he negotiated directly with patrons, with whom he would agree as to the size, price, and subject. Initially a fast painter, his rate of production subsequently slowed down. His late works are often individually larger and were still more carefully executed. About 250 paintings by Claude, out of a total of perhaps 300, and more than 1000 drawings have survived. He also produced 44 etchings. Although they are basically consistent in method and aim, Claude's paintings show a gradual stylistic evolution, and it is possible to distinguish the phases of his development. His early works, showing the influence of Tassi and of Dutch and Flemish artists, are busy, animated, and picturesque. They are full of charm and effects of surprise. His smaller pictures, painted on copper, reflect the spirit of the German artist Adam Elsheimer, who had died in Rome in 1610. Occasionally Claude painted directly from nature during this period, although no examples have been certainly identified; his normal method of nature study was by means of drawings. A pattern common in the early paintings is a dark mass of foliage on one side in the foreground contrasted with a misty sunlit distance on the other. Herdsmen tending cattle or goats move out from beneath the trees or sit beside a stream (scarcely any of Claude's paintings at any time are without figures and animals). Simultaneously Claude developed the traditional subject of a coastal scene with boats into a new type of picture: the seaport. This is an idealized harbor scene flanked on one or both sides with palaces, the latter often being adapted from actual ancient or contemporary buildings. Tall ships ride at anchor, recently arrived or preparing to depart. Light, however, is the key feature of the seaport pictures. Its source is often a visible sun just above the horizon, which Claude first introduced in 1634 in Harbor Scene and, in so doing, used the sun as the means of illuminating a whole picture for the first time in art. This use of light from the sky above the horizon, whether emanating directly from the sun or not, enforces another characteristic of Claude's paintings: recession in depth. Recession is further emphasized by subtle atmospheric perspective achieved through a gradual diminishing of the distinctness of outline and color from the foreground to the background. The light is nearly always that of dawn or evening. Beginning about 1640 Claude began to make his compositions more classical and monumental. The influence of contemporary Bolognese landscape painting, particularly the works of Domenichino, replaces that of Tassi and the northerners. During this decade something like a formula establishes itself: tall trees on one side of the picture balanced by a classical ruin and smaller trees further back on the other; a foreground stage with figures; a winding river conducting the eye by stages through an open landscape to the horizon; and distant hills, often with a glimpse of the sea. The figures are not, as often before, in contemporary dress but are always represented in classical or biblical costume. Contrary to popular belief, almost all of Claude's figures were painted by himself. Sometimes they are merely shepherds, but frequently they embody a subject from classical mythology or sacred history. The light is clearer than in paintings of the early or late periods. Spacious, tranquil compositions are drenched in an even light, as can be seen in Landscape: The Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah (also called The Mill), dated 1648. The 1650s witness some still larger and more heroic paintings, including The Sermon on the Mount. In the middle of the following decade, Claude's style moved into its last phase, when some of his greatest masterpieces were produced. The colour range is restricted, and the tones become cool and silvery. The figures are strangely elongated and by conventional standards ill drawn. At the same time, the subjects define the mood and sometimes determine the composition of the landscape. The paintings of this period are solemn and mysterious and radiate a sublime poetic feeling. It was in this spirit that Claude painted his famous work The Enchanted Castle. Claude's drawings are as remarkable an achievement as his paintings. About half are studies from nature. Executed freely in chalk or pen and wash, they are much more spontaneous than his paintings or studio drawings and represent informal motifs - trees, ruins, waterfalls, parts of a riverbank, fields in sunlight - that Claude saw on his sketching expeditions in the Campagna. Many were executed in bound books, which have since been broken up. The studio drawings consist partly of preparatory designs for paintings - Claude prepared his work more carefully than any previous landscape artist - and partly of compositions created as ends in themselves. Claude had only two students; nonetheless, his paintings influenced a number of Dutch painters who were in Rome during the late 1630s and '40s, and, in a broad sense, his influence can be seen even in the work of certain English landscape painters of the 19th century. — LINKS — Paysage Pastoral (1638, 97x130cm; 1150x848pix, 556kb _ ZOOM to 1696x2300pix) _ Claude Gellée was born near Nancy. After being trained as a pastry chef, he moved in 1628 to Rome where he studied painting. He was especially influenced by the northern landscape painters active in Rome, such as Paul Bril. Pastoral Landscape dates from Claude's first mature period and is generally considered the finest extant painting of his brilliant and seminal years between 1635 and 1640. It is also the Institute's most important old master acquisition in many decades. Claude was the supreme master of the ideal landscape and the founder of the modern landscape tradition. His influence is most evident in the works of 17th century Dutch Italianate painters, and his pictures anticipated every watershed in landscape painting of the 18th and 19th centuries, from the poetic naturalism of John Constable to Claude Monet's exquisite analysis of sunlight, color, and atmosphere. Even the pre-Cubist Piperboy (1911) by André Derain could be described, with little exaggeration, as an homage to Claude's pastoral inventions. Pastoral Landscape is a virtuoso performance by an artist at the height of his youthful promise. In its archetypal nostalgia for the simplicity of lost arcadian life, its fascination with light and atmosphere, and its totally subjective response to pure landscape, Claude's vision never fails to enchant. — Landscape with the Finding of Moses (1639, 209x138cm; 924x614pix, 96kb) — Landscape with Rest in Flight to Egypt (1647, 102x134cm; 790x1126pix, 149kb) — Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1666, 113x157cm; 742x1018pix, 151kb) _ detail (800x605pix, 95kb) — Seascape with Aeneas on Delos (1672) –-View of Tivoli at Sunset (1644, 100x136cm; 858x1184pix, 117kb _ .ZOOM to 1716x2368pix, 619kb _ .ZOOM+ to 3432x4736pix, 2631kb) –- Landscape with Cowherd aka Evening (55x80cm; 788x1177pix, 85kb _ .ZOOM to 1577x2354pix, 711kb) — Paysage avec le Rapt d'Europe (1655, 100x137cm, 750x995pix, 167kb) — Paysage de Rivage avec le Rapt d'Europe (1667, 135x102cm, 850x1147pix, 175kb) — 129 prints at Fine Arts Museums of SF –(061120) |
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Born on 23 November 1861 (05 Dec Julian): Constantin
Alexeyevich Korovin, Russian painter who died on 11 September
1932. — Korovin was born in Moscow into a family of businessmen. His grandfather, a self-made man was the founder of the family business; his father, Alexey Mikhailovich, after graduating from the University had to go into business as well, though he never liked it and was more interested in art and music. As a result, soon after the grandfather’s death the family went bankrupt and had to move into the country. Constantin and his younger brother, Sergey, also a future artist, were brought up in an artistic atmosphere, they received drawing and painting lessons since their childhood. In 1875, Constantin entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, among his teachers were I. Pryanishnikov, E. Sorokin, V. Perov, and A. Savrasov. “These fair and kind teachers left deep traces in my soul. They are all dead now; and I remember them with admiration and a sad love; they seem alive, before me, these pure and honest people…” At School Korovin became friends with I. Levitan. In 1881-1882, Korovin spent a year at the Academy in St. Petersburg, but returned disappointed to Moscow. That year a new professor came to the Moscow School, a distinguished painter Vasily Polenov, who impressed his students not only with his painting but also with his knowledge and enthusiastic attitude towards contemporary Western art, especially French. Korovin stayed with the new teacher at the Moscow School until 1886. Polenov introduced his student to the famous patron of arts Savva Mamontov and his Abramtsevo group. The group included artists who favored the school of national romanticism in Russia. They were the first in the country to stage operas, produce experimental architectural works and design books in the new (‘neo-Russian’) style. They projected the image of a universal artist: painter, furniture and tableware designer, designer of stage costumes and settings, architect. With Polenov’s recommendation S. Mamontov invited Korovin to work for his private opera. Thus Korovin got engaged with theater, for which he worked till the end of his life. Korovin was the first to introduce the Impressionist style on stage. In 1885, Korovin made his first of many trips to Paris and Spain. “Paris was a shock for me… Impressionists… in them I found everything for what I was scolded back at home, in Moscow.” In 1888, Korovin traveled with S. Mamontov to Italy, then visited Spain, where he painted one of his best works In Front of the Balcony: Leonora and Ampara. The artist traveled widely within Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia, exhibited with the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions (“Wanderers”), painting in an Impressionist and later an Art Nouveau style. In the 1890s, Korovin became very active in the World of Art group (“Mir Iskusstva”). These artists adopted a new aesthetic approach to the world’s artistic heritage; they popularized the traditions of folk art and of Russian art of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1896, Korovin designed, to great acclaim, the pavilion of the All-Russian Exhibition of Arts and Crafts at Nizhnii Novgorod. In 1900, he designed the decorations for the Central Asia section of the Paris World Fair; the same year he was awarded the Legion of Honor. At the beginning of the twentieth century Korovin began to take a more close interest in the theater Working for the Bolshoi theater he upheld new principles in designing operas and ballets. His evolution as a stage artist is directly linked to his mature painting. The peculiar features of the Russian Impressionist school became increasingly pronounced in his works of this period: the predilection for decorative effects, the emphatically expressive coloristic solutions and the pronounced romantic note. Korovin’s subjects were quite diverse, they included townscapes and rural landscapes, portraits and still lifes. The first years of the 20th century were undoubtedly the peak of his creative career. In 1905, Korovin received the title of the Academician of Painting, and in 1909-1913 taught at the Moscow School of Painting. In 1923, Korovin left Russia never to return. He spent the last 15 years of his life in France supported by Shalyapin, he worked for theater as a stage designer. He also became famous as a book illustrator, but this period is obviously inferior to his former achievements. He died in Paris. Constantin Korovin always protested against attempts to place him into any artistic school or movement. Nevertheless he became the first Russian Impressionist painter, moreover, he was the creator of the national variant of this International school. — Portrait of Korovin by Serov [07 Jan 1865 – 22 Nov 1911] — LINKS — Self-Portrait (1938) — In a Boat (Portrait of the Artist Maria Yakunchikova and Self-Portrait) (1888) — the Actress Titiana Liubatovich (1885) — Northern Idyll (1886) _ detail — the Opera Singer Fyodor Shalyapin (1905; 176kb) _ Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin [1873-1938], was one of the best representatives of the Russian vocal school. He sang in opera at Tiflis (1892), Moscow (1896), and London (1913). He left Russia forever after the Bolshevik Revolution. _ See also Fyodor Shalyapin (1905), drawing by Serov. — In Front of the Open Window (Shalyapin's Daughters, Irina and Lidya) (1916). — Pier in Gurzuf (1914) — Venice (1894) — Winter (1894) — Winter (1911) — 125 images at ABC gallery |
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Died on 23 November 1693:
Job Adriaenszoon Berckheyde, Dutch painter born on 27 January
1630. — Job was the brother of Gerrit
Adriaenszoon Berckheyde [06 Jun 1638 – 10 Jun 1698), his only
known student. Job's work is similar to his brother's, it is also rarer
and more varied, including genre and biblical scenes. — Job Berckheyde was apprenticed on 02 November 1644 to Jacob Willemszoon de Wet, whose influence is apparent in his first dated canvas, Christ Preaching to the Children (1661), one of the few biblical scenes in his oeuvre. On 10 June 1653 he repaid a loan from the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, which he subsequently joined on 10 March 1654. During the 1650s the brothers Job and Gerrit made an extended trip to Germany along the Rhine, visiting Cologne, Bonn, Mannheim and finally Heidelberg. Whether this occurred before or after 1654, when Job became a master of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, is uncertain. According to legend, the brothers worked in Heidelberg for Charles Ludwig [–1680], Elector Palatine; however, their inability to adapt to court life led them to return to Haarlem, where Gerrit became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke on 27 July 1660. In Haarlem the Berckheyde brothers shared a house and perhaps a studio as well. The idea that Job was the superior artist and habitually contributed the figures to Gerrit’s architectural subjects has been discounted, but the degree of their mutual influence and involvement remains unclear. Confusion between them may have resulted from the similarity of their signatures, where Job’s j resembles Gerrit’s g. Job also signed his work with an H (for Hiob or Job) and with the monogram HB. During his stay in Heidelberg, Job painted portraits and hunting scenes at the court of the Elector Palatine, who rewarded him with a gold chain, perhaps the one he wears in his early Self-portrait (1655), his only documented work from the 1650s. Job is better known for his later work, which consists mainly of interior views of Saint Bavo’s church in Haarlem and simple genre scenes recalling those of his Haarlem contemporaries Adriaen van Ostade and Jan Steen. — LINKS — The Baker probable self-portrait (1681; 775x591pix, 122kb) _ A specialist in city scapes, Berckheyde painted several pictures of bakery shops, which were popular as a subject for Dutch artists from around 1650. This inviting scene shows the baker blowing a horn to announce the morning's freshly baked bread. He is surrounded by a mouth-watering assortment of goods, including pretzels displayed on a specially designed wooden rack. The number of bakeries was considerable in seventeenth-century Holland, and like most merchants, bakers usually set up their operations in their own homes. Because their ovens were considered fire threats to adjacent property, they were often forced to live and do business in stone buildings, which probably explains Berckheyde's choice of architecture for The Baker. As for the model he selected, while an artist would have had no difficulty finding a real baker to pose, Berckheyde, it seems, painted himself in the role. — The Bakery Shop (670x561pix, 95kb) — Interior of the Groote Kerk, Haarlem (1676 100x88cm; 591x495pix, 46kb) _ Dutch artists of the 17th century tended to specialize in the depiction of two or three genres, thus assuring themselves market recognition. One of Berckheyde's specialties was architecture portrayed with great fidelity. The Church of Saint Bavo, the Great Church in the artist's hometown of Haarlem, is the subject of numerous such architectural portraits. The view down the aisle towards the ambulatory is enlivened by the play of light and shadow from the windows, which leads the viewers eyes into the distance. Although the architectural details are accurately described, the figures of the women in the church are proportionately too small: the artist has tricked the viewer into believing that the building is even bigger than it actually is. — Interior of the Saint Bavo Church at Haarlem (1665, 61x85cm; 770x1078pix, 148kb) _ Compare Interior of the Church of Saint Bavo in Haarlem (1636; 1600x933pix) by Pieter Janszoon Saenredam. |
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Died on 23 November 2002: Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, Surrealist painter, born in Chile on 11 November 1911, active mostly in France. — Matta pintó cuadros de inspiración surrealista y metafísica que ilustran un mundo onírico de la civilización tecnológica moderna. Se formó como arquitecto en Santiago de Chile y con Le Corbusier en París entre 1934 y 1935, donde se hizo amigo del pintor Marcel Duchamp. Al estallar la II Guerra Mundial se trasladó a Estados Unidos. De 1939 a 1948 Matta vivió en Nueva York, donde conoció a André Breton, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy y André Masson. Matta ha ejercido una influencia decisiva en la obra de Arshile Gorky y en la creación del expresionismo abstracto. Sus obras están pobladas de extraños autómatas híbridos y de criaturas a modo de insectos, como en Eros precipitado (1944). Otras obras significativas son La tierra es un hombre (1941), La cuestión Djamila (1962) y Sobre el estado de la unión (1965). — Matta was born in Santiago, Chile, and educated there as an architect and interior designer at the Sacré Coeur Jesuit College and at the Catholic University, from 1929 to 1931. In 1933 he became a sailor in the merchant marine, which enabled him to leave Santiago and travel to Europe. In 1933 and 1934 he worked in Paris as an assistant to architect Le Corbusier. At the end of 1934 Matta visited Spain, where he met the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, who through a letter, introduced young Roberto to Salvador Dalí. Dali in turn encouraged Matta to show some of his drawings to Andre Breton. Matta's acquaintance with Dali and Breton strongly influenced his artistic formation and subsequently connected him to the Surrealist movement, which he officially joined in 1937. He was in London for a short period in 1936 and worked with Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy. Matta's employment with the architects of the Spanish Republican pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition (1937) exposed him to Picasso's Guernica (1937) which greatly impressed him and influenced him in his work. At this time, he was introduced to the work of Marcel Duchamp, whom he met not long after. He later went to Scandinavia where he met the architect Alvar Aalto and then to Russia where he worked on housing design projects. The summer of 1938 marks the evolution of Matta's work from drawing to painting. Roberto completed his first inscape oil paintings while in Brittany and working with Gordon Onslow Ford. Forced to leave Europe with the outbreak of war, Matta arrived in New York in the Fall of 1938. In an article by Kathy Zimmerer of Latin American Masters, Beverly Hills, she describes Crucifixion [1938] as: "evolving biomorphic forms that mutate and flow across the surface of the canvas Matta's fluid realm of space cushions their journey. His luminous palette of deep crimson, yellow, blue and black, defines and outlines the organic forms as they undergo metamorphoses." Crucifixion is representative of a non-figurative period of Matta's work where he developed his palette and use of color to create energized forms and space. Consistent with his later works and with Surrealist theories of practice, Matta began his exploration of the visionary landscape of the subconscious. Matta looked to his friend and mentor Yves Tanguy whose works recall the hellscapes and allegories of 15th and 16th century Dutch artists such as Bosch or Bruegel. In addition, both Matta and Tanguy create a universe that is simultaneously fiery and chilly that is often connected to their own social consciousness of the ongoing war in Europe. Canady in Mainstreams of Modern Art, describes Matta's composition versus Tanguy's as have a "more diagrammatic composition [possibly a result of his architectural training] where a kind of astral geometry organizes the holocaust." In addition to Tanguy's strong influence, there are parallels between Picasso's Guernica and Matta's Crucifixion. Both works of art motivated by their respective spiritual and social consciousness. In Guernica, Picasso emphasizes the "spiritual hideousness of which mankind is generally capable". Matta focuses on the spiritual affect of the machinations of war. The visual landscape he creates connects us to each other, implying that when we declare war on others, we are really waging war with ourselves. These ideas are embodied in fluid forms and in their fluidity, texture, and contrast. Matta's style and willing exploration of the surrealist philosophy of automatic composition heavily influenced the development of the Abstract Expressionist school and their exploration of Action painting. Roberto Matta first exhibited in the Julian Levy Gallery, New York in 1940. The 1940s signified the re-entry of the human figure in Matta's compositions creating a compositional dialogue of Man versus the Machine. The forms he created were organic and existed in symbiotic relationships with machines. In 1947, Matta was expelled from the surrealists. By the 1950s and 60s he established homes in Rome, Paris, and London. Roberto visited Cuba in 1960's to work with art students. 1962 awarded the Marzotto Prize for La Question Djamilla, inspired by the Spanish Civil War. His work of the 1960s tended to have distinct political and spiritual intentions. Much of his work consisted themes related to events occurring such places as Vietnam, Santo Domingo, and Alabama. An exhibition of 1968 at the Iolas Gallery in New York displayed much of this work. The 1960s marked not only a change in his themes, but in his style. He found influence in contemporary culture while remaining close to his Surrealist roots. His work can generally be split into two areas: cosmic and apocalyptic paintings. Elle s'y Gare, is an example of the cosmic arena and what Andre Breton called "absolute automatism". The idea of automatism was a key element of the Surrealist movement, which emphasized the suppression of conscious control over a composition in order to give free reign to the unconscious imagery and associations. Matta used automatism in a manner that allowed one form to give rise to another until unification was achieved or until further elaboration destroyed the composition. These "chance" compositions are exploited with a fully conscious purpose. The artist takes over. As Chilean painter, printmaker and draughtsman, Matta left Chile as a young man and did not like to be thought of as a "Latin American" artist. He was certainly one of the few Surrealist artists to take on political, social, and spiritual themes directly and without abandoning the biomorphic mutations he is known for and without resorting to social realism. — LINKS –- I Want to See It To Believe It (1947, color lithograph 41x33cm; 1076x846pix, 104kb) –- Untitled Illustration of a Poem by Alain Bosquet (etching and color aquatint; 615x841pix, 63kb) {Centaur teaching the mathematical theory of basketball?} –- Composition (lithograph 30x50cm; 815x1261pix, 110kb) –- The Mooner (1959 color etching 37x48cm; 580x772pix, 56kb) {I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with what you and Google are thinking, or anything else, for that matter} — The Bachelors Twenty Years After (1943) {After what? you ask. – Presumably after Duchamp's 1923 The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even} — A Grave Situation {An emaciated alien is keeping invisible walls from closing in on him and crushing him?}(1946) — To Give Painless Light (1955) — Untitled {7 separated but unequal asterisks?} — Contra vosotros asesinos de Palmoas (1950, 200x271cm, 500x679pix, 89kb) –- S*>#Loge l'Hors de Temps (590x900pix, 144kb) – /S#*>L'Arc Obscur des Heures (x800pix, 86kb) – /S#*>Untitled (800x790pix, 69kb) – /S#*>Clémence Pour Clément: Beethoven Concerto in D, Opus No.61(800xpix, 72kb) sketchy suggestion of a cubist violinist, who has eight radial fingers on the right hand, and a complex extendable hook instead of a left hand (the deformed violin has not four, but three strings, they intersect; and the bow is between them and the body of the violin – /S#*>Pubertà Assai Vivace PUBERTA ASSAI VIVACE (69kb) four nearly-white silhouettes on a nearly-black background. – /S#*>Tornado di Sensazioni (800xpix, 75kb) – /S#*>Les Orienteurs (x800pix, 85kb) – /S#*>Cycle des Aubes (triptych x800pix, 41kb) – /S#*>Les Roses Sont Belles (800xpix, 90kb) the roses may be beautiful, but not this picture in which they are not. – /S#*>Yo Soy Quien Soy (x800pix, 87kb) – /S#*>La Vie d'une Raison (855x900pix, 110kb) – /S#*>Lumière de Lucienne (721x900pix, 75kb) – /S#*>Volatilise l'Échec (900x775pix, 183kb) what goes on behind that little window at the ATM? – /S#*>Conscience Ensoleillée (999x900pix, 171kb) cataclysm at the laundromat? – /S#*>Sign of the Times (x800pix, 71kb) naval disaster watched by two mooses? – /S#*>Tendre Mie (800xpix, 83kb) – /S#*>El Agua (x800pix, 79kb) – /S#*>Untitled (x800pix, 84kb) – /S#*>La Dulce Aqua Vita (800xpix, 99kb) – /S#*>The End of the World (800xpix, 95kb) – /S#*>Il Albero Giovanne (800xpix, 93kb) – /S#*>Untitled (900x695pix, 73kb) – /S#*>Les Placets de Paracelse (800x882pix, 195kb) – /S#*>Voracité (1976, 73x62cm; 900x773pix, 135kb) – /S#*>Écran du Feu (890x687pix, 154kb) – /S#*>Midsummer Night Dew (842x1000pix, 191kb) – /S#*>Mattarialism (900x3382pix, 325kb) – /S#*>Untitled (779x900pix, 160kb) UFO (unidentified fractured object)? – /S#*>To Know and To See (1955, 116x147cm; 712x900pix, 138kb) – /S#*>La Pupille de Vénus (x799pix, 93kb) – /S#*>Untitled (x799pix, 29kb) faint sketch: 4 aliens? – /S#*>La Source du Calme (799xpix, 102kb) frog-like aliens window shopping? – /S#*>Untitled (732x900pix, 122kb) gyrating princess meets alien frog king? – /S#*>Untitled (590x900pix, 202kb) — Paintings and drawings (423 in all) from the 1930s — 1940~1944 — 1945~1949 — 1950~1954 — 1955~1959 — 1960~1964 — 1965~1969 — 1970~1974 — 1975~1979 — 1980~1984 — 1985~1989 — 1990~1994 — 1995~1999 — 2000s — 17 etchings and lithographs –(061121) |
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