POETRY. For the artist, as Leonardo taught, it is necessary to go beyond appearances
Archaic idols, tribal totems, amphorae that end up resembling monstrous heads (certainly not made to contain liquids, but to provoke imagination), chairs with horns (on which one would think twice before sitting). A gust of bronze surrealism has invaded the Venetian garden of Palazzo Soranzo Cappello. A “collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale.” One of many, indeed — this time featuring around forty sculptures by Roberto Sebastian Matta (1911–2002).
The exhibition (open until October 15) is curated by Flaminio Gualdoni and Alessia Calarota (catalogue by Silvana Editoriale). A return to Venice — and to the Biennale itself. In fact, in the previous edition (2013), Matta had already appeared in the International Art Exhibition of the Lagoon (what better stage?), again as a collateral event, at the Querini Stampalia Foundation, alongside two of his six children: Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) and Pablo Echaurren (1951). A family reunion, though with only one survivor.
The sculptures on display date from the 1970s to 1993. A number of them were cast in 2009 (Matta died in 2002), as faithfully reported in the catalogue. As early as the 1940s, the artist was drawing primitive figures evoking the magical universe of Latin America: archaic, stylized subjects born of an inexhaustible, extraordinary imagination. Let us not forget that Matta, though of Basque descent, was born in Santiago, Chile, and his formation was shaped first by pre-Columbian and Chilean culture, then — once in Europe — by Mediterranean and Etruscan influences. Add to this his apprenticeship within the Surrealist tribe, and the picture is complete.
“Strange” figures, as has been said — much like his animals (unrecorded in zoological manuals) or his scentless flowers. In Paris, Matta began working as an architect in the studio of the genius Le Corbusier. Yet he soon preferred fantastic architecture to traditional forms — a tendency encouraged by Breton’s automatic writing.
Once he embarked on this path, he never left it, though always on his own terms. (“I was like Jesus in the temple among the doctors of law: a child. They gave me faith, affection, and initiation into the verb to be.”) As for “dogmatic” Surrealism — that was not for him. He transformed it according to his own needs (“I aimed to grasp change itself, as Duchamp taught me”). Matta sought to dig into the human being, to see both inside and beyond visible reality. (“Marx and Freud are far more painters than Delacroix,” he said, “because they saw hidden realities — and that is the true function of seeing"), Although he referred here to painting, the same insight applies to his sculpture.
Pay attention to their composition: giant idols absorbing others; symbolic shapes; openings reminiscent of old iron kitchen doors; sign-like panels with mysterious languages; inlays, friezes, ironic headpieces, fragments of everything.
One work is titled Leonardando Vinci: a vase with an arabesque structure (perhaps great bat wings?) that naturally evokes the Renaissance genius. On the artist’s role, Matta often cited Leonardo, who taught him “how necessary it is to go beyond appearances to see the virulent reality in which we sail.”
In the end, Matta concluded: “We call ‘reality’ only the fragments of the phenomenal daily storm that our limited, mutilated, manipulated perception disguises.”
At this point, a mediation becomes necessary. Who can offer it? Only an artist. Which artist? And whom did Matta think he resembled? “I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m Chaplin.” Yet he was convinced he was a cyclone, one that absorbed “the vibrations of a fly’s wings, the system of a butterfly, and that of a flea’s leg.”
He liked to quote Lautréamont’s fierce remark: “Beautiful as the development of a pulmonary disease.” Matta appreciated this biting phrase — because he, too, was fierce. Presenting his exhibition in 1963 at Arturo Schwarz’s gallery in Milan, Italo Calvino described the Chilean artist as “aggressive, joyful, and fierce.”
But only by being so, Calvino concluded, can one discover in this world “what paths, what convulsions and spasms, what grimaces and rash gestures stir within it — as if moved by the sound of an underground saxophone.”
TRIBUTES:
- The 56th Venice Biennale pays homage to Roberto Sebastian Matta with an exhibition organized by the Fondazione Echaurren–Salaris, in collaboration with the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore G.A.M. of Bologna, and curated by Flaminio Gualdoni with Alessia Calarota. Hosted at Palazzo Soranzo, home to the Superintendence for Architectural Heritage (until October 15).
- In the photo: Two bronze "Totems" (1991) by the Chilean artist Roberto Sebastian Matta are displayed in this collateral exhibition of the 56th Venice Art Biennale. The sculptures date from the 1970s to 1993, with several works cast in 2009.
