Iolas Jackson Gallery, New York
A. and V. Berliner, New York
Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art, New York

This painting is in very good condition. The canvas has a thin vertical reinforcement on the reverse in the lower right quadrant. The stretcher is not original yet the canvas is well stretched. The paint layer is in healthy condition. It has not been cleaned, yet neither is it dirty, and it has not been varnished. The only retouch is in the green and black portion of the picture in the lower right corner, corresponding to the reinforcement on the reverse. This restoration is approximately four inches long yet extremely thin and nicely applied. (This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.)
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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By 1951 Matta had settled in Rome far removed from the professional and personal polemics that had alienated him from the New York and Parisian vanguards and which culminated in his break from the surrealists group in 1949.  However far from allowing these circumstances to hinder his artistic vision Matta appeared to use this time to initiate a new phase of creativity and exploration unencumbered by the limitations and tenets of the Surrealists movement. Indeed as art historian Martica Sawin well indicates, as early as the late 1930s when Matta joined the Surrealists movement it was evident that "his vision did not conform to the general conception of surrealist art."¹ As the youngest recruit to Surrealism, Matta had already defined his own approach to art making which he termed "Psychological Morphologies"—that is to give vision to the inner workings of the psyche as being in a constant stateꦅ of transformatio🐼n. This notion of perpetual change would soon permeate his conception of the cosmos and give way to diaphanous and mysterious landscapes that revealed both inner and outer worlds in constant state of turmoil, destruction and regeneration. And, thus by the late 1940s when Matta's rift from the Surrealists came to its logical conclusion, the artist must have felt liberated and empowered to pursue his own objectives.

Principle among these was Matta's mounting concerns about the horrors of the War and news unfolding regarding the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust. It became evident that he could no longer afford to merely express his intimate dream world or inner psyche, but rather a new found urgency emerged that demanded he give vision to the broader issues relevant to all humanity—a universal consciousness. Matta expressed this shift as follows: "I was attempting to use a social morphology, not a personal psycho-morphology: to move away from intimate, imaginary forms . . . towards the cultural, totemic expressions of civilizations . . . the formation of cultures in confrontation with social landscapes."² One may argue that this social and global consciousness had been ignited during Matta's 1941 trip to Mexico, an experience that had profound impact on the artist as the following statement surely indicates, "I found in Mexico a class violence. The silence between foreigner, Spaniard, and Indian was a frightening silence of drawn knives . . . an interior battlefield."³ Indeed Mat❀ta's renewed contact with his Latin American roots during the 1940s, his relationship with the Chilean writers Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, his growing admiration for the work of the Mexican muralists, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco that spurred his own desire to work in a much larger s🐽cale, as well as his enthusiasm for collecting pre-Columbian and later Native American and tribal objects all informed his increased interest in developing a more humanistic and socio-politically engaged practice.

Thus by the late 1940s and 1950s, Matta's biomorphic landscapes and "psychological morphologies" had evolved into ethereal and disturbing Kafkaesque worlds populated by tubular humanoids partially inspired by mythical totemic figures transformed into monstrous, insect-like beings or "mechanomorphs" victims of the dehumanizing effects of technology, social injustice, and political corruption. Executed in 1951, Untitled bears the key elements that define Matta's production during this period, cosmic and social landscapes that simultaneously evince recent historical events while providing a metaphorical window into the timeless struggles of humanity. Here Matta employs his familiar use of thin layers of white paint, sponged and wiped onto the canvas to create a veiled and limitless space. Shades of viridian green, orange-y𓃲ellow, purple, bright red, and cool grays draw our attention to fixed points while tubular beings with elongated limbs along꧒ with insect-like automatons seem to surround a mechanical structure, airplane or force field positioned in the center of this mysterious composition. Rhomboids and translucent planes puncture the pictorial space imparting an illusion of three-dimensionality while suggesting the winged apparatus of this fantastical flying machine. Likewise these forms reveal Matta's longtime fascination with the mathematical theories of Jules Henri Poincaré along with study and application of non-Euclidean spatial relationships.

The cruciform structure doubles as a central nave or totemic life force whose bodily parts have been supplanted with propellers perhaps un an effort to assert its mystical powers or its ability to transcend the physical realm. The mood here is decidedly somber informed by a dystopian, post war sensibility while also indicative of the artist's Catholic upbringing and his fears about judgment day dating back to his Jesuitical training. Thus the image inevitably conjures religious references to the crucifixion or apocalypse as well as to the Nuremberg Trials in the 1940s or the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg that was held in New York in March 1951. The trial culminated with their conviction and eventual execution for espionage against the US government and was certainly a subject Matta was familiar with as it was the impetus for his canvas Les Roses Sont Belles painted that same year.

While it is tempting to interpret this paintings in such literal terms it's important to note that even as the figurative and narrative elements in Matta's work became more prevalent, he remained committed to making visual a cosmic reality that transcended traditional notions of time and space. Moreover in keeping with the Surrealist belief that in order to change society one must first transform individual consciousness, works such as this appear to embody this "humanistic" mantra by asserting the redemptive power of the individual.  Alas, in keeping with a cosmological vision rooted in perpetual transformation, here Matta appears to posit that eternal and primordial force as a catalyst for achieving a greater balance between man and his environment. Thus, while Matta's artistic practice may have evolved, the guiding precepts he had articulated from the beginning—his belief in the fusion between inner and outer worlds—and which informed his 🔴approach and contribution to the Parisian vanguard and the nascent New York School would persists throughout his unparalleled and prolific career.

Marysol Nieves, independent curator based in 🌸New York

1 Martica Sawin, "Matta: Endless Nudes," in auction catalogue Latin American Art (New York: Sotheby's, 2009), lot 11, p. 24.

2 As quoted in Valerie Fletcher, "Matta," in exhibition catalogue Crosscurrents of Modernism: Four Latin American Pioneers, Diego Rivera, Joaquín Torres-García, Wifredo Lam, Matta (Washington, D.C.: Hirschhorn M🐼useum and Sculpt⛄ure Garden in association with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), p. 247.

3 As quoted in Elizabeth T. Goizueta, "The Artist as Poet: Symbiosis between Narrative and Art in the Work of Matta" in exhibition catalogue Matta: Making the Invisible Visible (Boston, MA: Charles S. 💮and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 👍2004, p. 22.