Daughter Federica is born.In January he exhibits at the Sidney Janis Gallery. Participates in a summer exhibition of ceramics in Albissola with Appel, Corneille and Jorn. His sculptures are called Cuit de terre and Etcètre. Participates in the third São Paulo Biennale and wins a prize at Pittsburg International.
In April 1956, Matta exhibited for the first time at the Galerie du Dragon, two paintings made in collaboration with Victor Brunuer, as well as a series of temperas and drawings on the theme of television. New exhibition at Galerie du Dragon in June. Charles Estienne, commenting on the exhibition, in the “Observateur,” will speak of “lyricism of knowledge,” Jen-Jacques Leveque on “Cimaise” of vegetable melodrama, while Alain Bosquet, in Combat will title “Matta, a great painter cosmic”. In December, Daniel Cordier organizes “the most entertaining exhibition of the year” (Luce Hoctin in Arts) featuring Dubuffet, Dewasne and Matta. Also in that year, Matta makes for UNESCO a large canvas (5 meters long): Le Doute des trois mondes.
In January-February, the Ruth Moskin Gallery held a retrospective of colored pencil drawings, followed in April by the Galerie du Dragon. In September-October 1957, William Rubin mounts at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the first major retrospective of Matta's work, including 29 paintings made after 1937. Max Clarac Sérou organizes an exhibition of works from the 1950s at the Eugenio Mendoza Foundation in Caracas.
Matta takes a stand against torture in Algeria and paints a resolutely committed work, La Question, in response to Henri Alleg's book La Question, published in February by Editions de Minuit and immediately censored. In June, he exhibited at the Galerie du Dragon La Polymorphie des conflits, accompanied by a text by Alain Jouffroy entitled La Question, éditions du Dragon.
In October 1959, his first European retrospective opened at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, curated by Pontus Hulten: fifteen canvases and several drawings are included.
“...Matta's fifteen paintings assembled in Stockholm clearly show that the ambition of this good painter is to rediscover-but with the legacy of Surrealism, as formal freedom, and all the acuity of the modern spirit, as social as well as psychological critique - what was called “the great machine,” genre painting, history painting. A work such as The Question, which is recent (1958, 203 cm X 300 cm), shows this, Matta does not want to be ruler of an inner realm”.
Hubert Juin, “Stockholm consecrates Matta's work,” Combat, Thursday, Dec. 24, 1959
Matta participated in two major group shows in the same year: the eighth “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme 1959-1960” at Galerie Daniel Cordier, organized by André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, José Pierre and Puerre Faucheux on the theme of Eros. He thus finds himself reintegrated, at the last minute, among the Surrealists. Indeed, on the night of December 2, at the home of Joyce Mansour, during the reading of the Testament of the Marquis de Sade by Jean Benoit had been the only one among those present to brand himself twice, in hot stamp, with the name of the Marquis Couch. The second group show is “Documenta,” in Kassel, where three of his works appear. He began painting Espace de L'Espéce, a polyptych on which he would work until 1968.
First exhibition of sculptures at Galerie du Dragon. In February, participates in the exhibition Antagonismes, organized by Julien Alvard at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
In November, participates in the exhibition Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanter's Domain, organized by the d'Arcy Gallery, New York. He exhibited at the Bodley Gallery, pastels and oils from 1937 to 1957, and at the Frumkin Gallery, drawings related to the earthquake in Chile. In Combat, of September 19, Alain Jouffroy publishes an article in which he cites Matta as the painter “most revolutionary and independent,” in reference to a triptych for Fidel Castro. Birth of son Ramuntcho.
From the left: 1. Giuseppe Ungaretti and Matta, Galleria l'Attico, Roma, 1960Spends three months in Chile and creates a 12-meter-long mural, now disappeared, Vivir enfrentando las flechas (Living by facing arrows) for the Technical University of Santiago.
In June, he exhibits recent paintings by Daniel Cordier whose ferocity and audacity provoke numerous comments in the press. He also exhibits at L'Attico in Rome. In October, participates in Abstract Expressionist Imagists organized by the Guggenheim Museum.
In 1962 he exhibited at Galerie du Port Cardinal in Paris and again in Rome at Galleria L'Attico presented by Calvino. He receives the Marzotto Prize for La Question, which will be exhibited in Eindhoven, Baden-Baden, London and Paris. Publicly offers his award to F.L.N. representatives in attendance. Participates in the exhibition L'Art latino-américain in Paris with a triptych En Cuba ahora. Alain Bosquet talks about the “dynamite of the soul” and “our only epic painter: Matta”.
In 1963 he exhibited his recent works at the Cordier and Warren Gallery in New York. The Museo Civic of Bologna organized a retrospective exhibition of his work, the catalog of which contained a Small Guide to the Art of Matta by Max Clarac-Sérou and a panel discussion on “Art and Revolution”, featuring, among others, Guttuso, Argan and De Micheli. Matta spoke on Cuba, where he had traveled for the first time that year.
“One should not admire a painting as an object of absolutes, as a masterpiece ... The work must be understood as a piece of paper where the man makes an explanation, where he feels that he is, and where he feels that he can be together with others. So there is no longer a horizon or four walls, there is a space, an ideal topography, but mathematical in character. Art needs to invent its own logic different from the philosophical one, because the philosophical one was full of essences. It seems to me that propositions with a popular character must be understood in this sense because they have to go into the roots. For example, there is a program that I intend to carry out in Cuba when I return: making paintings with the land of Cuba... That land has red colors that are connatural to all African art that we know. Already in those colors there is a kind of aspect conditioned to these forces of the “background” (...) In art our weapon is sensuality, sensuality defined as a form of knowing the world. Through the senses, to know the cosmos...”
“What has fascinated me most about Cuba is that it really is another world. There is a lot of talk about this desire to change the world, but when someone lives in such a different reality, they understand really the importance of the artist. The function of the artist is to invent qualities, to invent a humanity; and the word culture for me means imagination, culture of imagination, which is what we lack the most”.
Roberto Matta, Art and Revolution, Spring 1963
The Bologna exhibition would later be transferred to museums in Düsselforf and Vienna. Werner Hoffmann will title the presentation of the Vienna exhibition “Matta, or the Time of Violence”. At the end of the year Matta will exhibit several of his works, created in the 1950s simultaneously at Galerie Iolas and Galerie Engelberts in Geneva. He painted at that time the triptych Cinecittà, highlighting the contrast between his trip to Cuba and “the absurd world of the new Hollywood Rome”.
Matta, Cuba, 1963. Photo by MorainIn 1964 a retrospective exhibition of his work was organized at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and then again at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (which buys the Onzeformes du doute) and at the Kunsthalle in Mannheim. Matta returns again to Cuba for an exhibition at Casa de las America. In May he exhibits at the Galleria l'Attico in Rome the paintings made with Cuban soil Cuba frutto bomba.
In June he participates in Daniel Cordier's farewell exhibition, “8 ani d'agitation”. And again at the “III Documenta” in Kassel, with a series of drawings and five paintings from the 1960s. He began painting the Powers of Disorder or Grimau following the 1963 execution of Franco by Julian Grimou, leader of the Communist Party by the Franco regime.