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Lot Essay
*This painting is sold to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. Accordingly, this lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the back of this catalogue.
Matta's mural Watchman, What of the Night?, 1961, once hung proudly in the bedroom of the legendary art dealer Alexander Iolas. His majestic Athenian estate also housed a collection of priceless antiquities, exquisite Old World furniture and the many works by Picasso, Ernst, Magritte and Leger, among other artists which were part of the impressive roster of 20th Century masters that were exhibited in his network of New York, Paris, Milan and Geneva galleries.
Throughout a body of work that spans more than 7 decades Matta employed painting as a means to represent the mind's inner universe and to elucidate ways in which the physical world is processed and perceived. His inscape and psychological morphology paintings of the late 30's and early 40's are psychic landscapes that go beyond perceived reality; they constitute visions of the unconscious and are regarded as high points of Surrealism. His intellectual sharpness and fierce imagination were tremendously influential to the generation of Abstract Expressionist painters emerging in New York in the 1940's.
It is also during this decade that Matta's paintings became grander in scale, allowing figuration to surface in the form of strange, totemic figures that seem to perform ritualistic acts of a violent nature. His work extended to a social dimension, blurring the line that demarcates inner life and external space; as his mental landscapes, that were often symbolic of creation and birth, introduced narratives of doom such as the horrors of war and its aftermath.
Painted in 1961, Watchman, What of the Night? is an epic mural that brings together Matta's vocabulary of abstract forms - biomorphic lines and fluid shapes in explosive yellows, reds and greens against the nocturnal penumbra - along with characters that seem born of nightmarish visions. Masterful draftsmanship and sublime painterly effects create an expansive, vastness of space shifting before our eyes. It is the stage for an apocalyptic scene in which fallen bodies and imploring figures capitulate to weapon-bearing creatures in the midst of this incendiary landscape in flux.
A timeless work that resonates with the contemporary viewer, Watchman, What of the Night? shares the inquisitive nature of Matta's artistic project. It is, after all, the product of an artist that employed his métier to make sense of his place in time and space, observing with wonder and redefining the world around him.
Matta's mural Watchman, What of the Night?, 1961, once hung proudly in the bedroom of the legendary art dealer Alexander Iolas. His majestic Athenian estate also housed a collection of priceless antiquities, exquisite Old World furniture and the many works by Picasso, Ernst, Magritte and Leger, among other artists which were part of the impressive roster of 20th Century masters that were exhibited in his network of New York, Paris, Milan and Geneva galleries.
Throughout a body of work that spans more than 7 decades Matta employed painting as a means to represent the mind's inner universe and to elucidate ways in which the physical world is processed and perceived. His inscape and psychological morphology paintings of the late 30's and early 40's are psychic landscapes that go beyond perceived reality; they constitute visions of the unconscious and are regarded as high points of Surrealism. His intellectual sharpness and fierce imagination were tremendously influential to the generation of Abstract Expressionist painters emerging in New York in the 1940's.
It is also during this decade that Matta's paintings became grander in scale, allowing figuration to surface in the form of strange, totemic figures that seem to perform ritualistic acts of a violent nature. His work extended to a social dimension, blurring the line that demarcates inner life and external space; as his mental landscapes, that were often symbolic of creation and birth, introduced narratives of doom such as the horrors of war and its aftermath.
Painted in 1961, Watchman, What of the Night? is an epic mural that brings together Matta's vocabulary of abstract forms - biomorphic lines and fluid shapes in explosive yellows, reds and greens against the nocturnal penumbra - along with characters that seem born of nightmarish visions. Masterful draftsmanship and sublime painterly effects create an expansive, vastness of space shifting before our eyes. It is the stage for an apocalyptic scene in which fallen bodies and imploring figures capitulate to weapon-bearing creatures in the midst of this incendiary landscape in flux.
A timeless work that resonates with the contemporary viewer, Watchman, What of the Night? shares the inquisitive nature of Matta's artistic project. It is, after all, the product of an artist that employed his métier to make sense of his place in time and space, observing with wonder and redefining the world around him.