12AM – L’Arc Obscur Des Heurs

Description

12AM – L’Arc Obscur Des Heurs, 1975 by Roberto Matta is from the L´Arc Obscur Des Heurs suite. This print 12AM – L’Arc Obscur Des Heurs is an Aquatint from the signed and numbered edition of 125 on Arches paper. Published by G. Visat, Paris. Ferrari 109.

Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta was an international figure whose worldview represented a synthesis of European, American, and Latin American cultures. As a member of the Surrealist movement and an early mentor to several Abstract Expressionists, Matta broke with both groups to pursue a highly personal artistic vision. His mature work blended abstraction, figuration, and multi-dimensional spaces into complex, cosmic landscapes. Matta’s long and prolific career was defined by a strong social conscience and an intense exploration of his internal and external worlds.

Throughout a long and fruitful career that spanned six decades and multiple continents, Matta established himself as one of the central figures in the Surrealist movement. Yet, while he certainly shared stylistic and intellectual similarities with the Surrealist group, he was never able to completely reconcile his strong social conscience with its necessarily inward-looking practices. Instead, Matta balanced his interest in the human psyche with an active engagement with the external world. Matta broke with the conventions of the Surrealist movement by adding a dimension of social and political awareness to his work. He often supplemented an aesthetic of pure abstraction with elements of figuration and precisely rendered, though fantastically conceived, three-dimensional space. Matta’s exploration of the unconscious mind through a symbolic language of abstract forms greatly influenced the early development Abstract Expressionism.