Roberto Matta

For a year now, the Maison d'Amérique latine in Paris has been presenting several outdoor sculpture exhibitions at its magnificent Eighteenth Century oval patio. The display of works by Mexicans Juan Soriano and Águeda Lozano were followed by the presentation of twenty-one bronze sculptures by Roberto Matta, created between the mid-1970s and the beginning of the 1990s, and gathered to commemorate the centennial of the artist¿s birth (1911-2002). The works were loaned by two private collectors from Paris: Germana Ferrari and Federica Matta, the artist's wife and daughter, respectively. Most of the sculptures had never been exhibited in France before. Without leaving aside the erotic dimension that inhabits Matta's entire body of work, these pieces clearly convey the influence of intermingled African, oriental, and surrealist roots that, when combined, attest to the multiple aesthetic sources and the proteiform culture of the Chilean artist. The excellently executed curatorship by Jacques Leenhardt evokes a totemic space-reminiscent of the Easter Island effigies-and communicates a magic and density that is at once poetic and ritualistic.