From the left: 1. Roberto Matta as a child, 2. Roberto Matta, Cuba, 1963, 3. Roberto Matta with the number π, 'Pi', his lucky number. Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson
Roberto Antonio Sebástian Matta-Echaurren, known as Matta, was born in Santiago, Chile, on 11 November 1911, in the house of his maternal grandfather Victor Echaurren-Valero, located in the historic center of the Chilean capital. He came from an old family of Chilean notables with distant Basque ancestry. His parents, Roberto Sebastián Matta-Tagle and Mercedes Echaurren-Herboso had other three children-Sergio, Mario, and Mercedes.
“I was born on 11/11/11, actually the real biography of a person is not the day one is born, the place...”
From the left: Matta as a child, Matta and his mother, Matta at school
From the autoelastobiography:
I remember the lights of Valparaiso at night, riding a giant turtle, I remember my dog black Siki and Dr. Commentz's gold watch. I remember trips to Europe with my grandmother and parents, being dressed as an angel, taking crystal slippers to a children's party, learning to swim in Viña del Mar, in the Pacific Ocean, temperature 12°.
From 1918 onward, Matta attended high school at Sacred Heart College, by the Jesuits, where he was French was taught. Since the buildings that housed the school had been devastated by fire in 1920, Matta witnessed continuous restoration work that perhaps prompted a certain vocation for architecture. Two inks dated April 1924, signed Rob MaΠa or Roberto MaΠA, show an interest in social subjects. Matta is expelled from college following vignettes featuring the fathers and the seven deadly sins.
From the autoelastobiography:
Recollection of the Dempsey - Carpentier meeting. Recollection of the history, botany and biology hour at the College of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary and the stomach ache during the exercises.
As a teenager, Matta expressed his desire to travel to Europe. In 1928, he obtained his high school diploma as a private student. The country is experiencing great instability politics; General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo declares himself president.
Matta enrolls in the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile for the architecture course. He is greatly influenced by the teaching of Hernán Gazmuri, a young Cubist painter and former student of Lhote.
Matta does his military service in Viña del Mar. Still a student, he witnesses the violent seizure of the University of Santiago by military power and draws caricatures of Chilean presidents (Ibanez, Montero and Alessandri) for the Topaz magazine signed Π. The Greek letter Pi, introduced by his youthful signature, allows the calculation of surface and space, one of the main themes of his his future work. After the death of his grandfather, he founded a company with his brother Sergio: “Muebles Matta.” He becomes friends with Lilian Lorca.