Compostion XV 1962

Matta made this print, Composition XV, using intaglio, a printmaking technique in which the image is incised into a surface. Just imagine the labour! The brown-black background feels like deep space, with glowing off-white shapes and a few bright green circles floating around. What was Matta thinking when he made it? Maybe he was imagining the cosmos, or perhaps the inner workings of the mind? I love to imagine how the artist made marks, going back and forth, discovering what felt right through instinct. Sometimes it feels like a happy accident when shapes suddenly begin to talk to each other. The pointy lozenge shapes and the balls feel like a playful contrast of hard and soft, light and dark. I think it invites me to see the world not as a solid thing, but as something always in flux. Artists are always having a conversation, and Matta’s spirit reminds me of Gorky and Miro, and their biomorphic abstractions. Painting is like thinking in public, but with images!