«The question is not - to be or not to be. It is to be born from something while giving birth to something else. It is not to create, it is to procreate, to generate.» Matta
For the third year in a row, the Malingue gallery pursues and extends its exploration into the work of the Surrealist movement's leading artists. After Yves Tanguy and Max Ernst, the star of this year show is Matta.
Both Olivier and Daniel Malingue have long been fond of Matta and, over the years, have acquired a number of his works which they have never before resolved themselves to part with. Having received such a warm response from scholars and collectors to the announcement of their project, they have decided to provide the public a thorough and informative selection of Matta’s works.
Olivier Malingue has chosen over fifty works from private and public collections, covering all aspects of Matta’s creations during this seminal period of the artist's life. These include a dozen rare oils, some of which were painted in 1941 during his stay in Mexico with Robert Motherwell. Also present is Le Forçat de la Lumière (The Prisoner of Light) (1943), considered a masterpiece by William Rubin, who included it in the first Matta retrospective held at the MoMA in 1957. The forty or so drawings present a quasi-exhaustive survey of his ideas, styles and subjects during this major period.
The well documented monograph published in 1987, Entretiens morphologiques-Notebook N° 1, 1936-1944 sheds light on these years, and Malingue is the first gallery to organize a show specifically dedicated to them. These are the years when Matta, already accomplished as a draughtsman, discovered painting as a means of expression, a medium for ideas and suggestions, and as a way of grasping the universe. He then abandoned architecture and began life as a painter. He called his first oil paintings, which appeared in 1938, psychological morphologies, and from then developed his unique personality as an artist. Departing for New York in 1939, Matta worked among the young artists there and acted as a catalyst to the birth of the New York School. It is this moment of modern art that Olivier Malingue wishes to unveil to the many devotees of Surrealism.
All the works in the show will be reproduced in a full colour scholarly catalogue with a preface by Olivier Berggruen, and the reprint of an essay from 1985 by William Rubin who curated the first Matta retrospective in New York, in 1985. Proceeds from the catalogue sale will be donated to the association «NRB - Vaincre le Cancer» (Defeat Cancer). Last year the proceeds from the sales of the Max Ernst catalogue provided a one year research scholarship. Malingue gallery is happy to renew its initiative and help promote medical research.