(b. Santiago, Chile, 1911).
Matta was primarily recognized for his oil painting as well as his involvement with the Surrealists. He studied architecture at the French Jesuit College of the Sacred Heart and earned his degree in 1931. He traveled to Europe in 1933 as a Merchant Marine where he stayed in to work as an assistant to Le Courbusier for two years. Through his acquaintance with Garcia Lorca and Dali, Matta met Andre Breton and became involved with the Surrealists. With the outbreak of WWII he moved to first New York in 1939, then to Mexico the following year. In 1942 he illustrated Breton's Prolegomena to a Third Manifesto of Surrealism, and was subsequently expelled from the group. He has traveled extensively and exhibited all over the world including Africa, Central and South America. His major exhibitions include retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1957 the National Gallery in Berlin, 1970, and the Pompidou Center in Paris, 1985.
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