Untitled (from the Morphology series)

Upon his arrival in New York City in the fall of 1939, Matta seeked the representation of surrealist art dealer Julien Levy. Decades later, when asked to recall his earliest memories on Matta in his Memoirs of an Art Dealer, Levy candidly recalled him as "a newcomer to Surrealist ranks, recommended to him by André Breton. He was young, he was Chilean... He appeared in my gallery confident, exuberant and mercurial and produced a portfolio of explosive crayon drawings, vowing he would complete enough canvases for an exhibition in the next two months--if I were interested".

Painted in 1939, Untitled is arguably one of Matta's first canvases produced within the psychological morphology' series. As in the best of these biomorphic landscapes, the picture is seemingly divided into two liquid planes; one suggesting a terrestrial and ever-changing void where elements float and organic suggestions merge, and a second one, where darker, smaller organic shapes dictate an impending chaos.

Besides being a morphological projection of a psychological state, Untitled portrays a handful of colorful inner drawings as complex in their intricacy as the effect of liquidity brought forth by the composition. An amalgam of the architectural and the biomorphic, the present painting succeeds in conveying the extraordinary quality of Matta's most impressive and lasting period.