Cecilia de Torres, Ltd.

Francisco Matto - Portraits, Totems and Graphisms 1999 Autumn



Francisco Matto - Portraits, Totems and Graphisms, 1911 - 1995

An artist of humble materials, Pre-Columbian scholar and collector, aristocrat of the Taller Torres-García artists and gifted portrayer of the feminine. This exhibition celebrates Matto's portraits and VENUS totems.

"If we don't attain the elemental shapes we will never be able to arrive at the mystery." Matto

"These words, imbued with deep significance and expressed with his characteristic candor and simplicity, are the key to Matto's art and his being. Every artist develops a way of working that will best allow him to give concrete form to his vision. Matto's system resembles the discipline of Zen: the repetition of a prayer or an action that produces a state of introspection in which intuition and perceptual powers are heightened. Concentrating on the most important lines and volumes, slowly and methodically he would isolate the "elemental forms" of reality. As in the sculptures of Brancusi, the most comprehensive contemporary exponent of purist forms, the same theme is also repeated over and over, each new version differing subtly from the previous one."
Cecilia de Torres, excerpted from the Buenos Aires catalogue essay, Galería Palatina, March, 1999

"The Review" Review

Francisco Matto

Born 1911 and died 1995 in Montevideo, Uruguay

Privately tutored and a child painter, Matto at age 21, traveled to Tierra del Fuego and acquired the first Pre-Columbian pieces of what was to become a major collection and an important influence on his art. Matto met Torres-García in 1939, joining his atelier and exhibiting with the artists of the Taller Torres-García until the 1960s. An elegant, aristocratic man, Matto worked with humble materials, preferring cardboard to canvas and found pieces of wood for his sculptures. His work has been exhibited at the Sálon des Surindépendants, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; in Spain, Italy, Germany, Moscow, Tokyo, New York and throughout Latin America. Matto's monumental concrete sculptures are landmarks in Punta del Este, Uruguay.


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