Glande fiction 1938

Roberto Matta made this 45 x 65 cm drawing, Glande fiction, with colored pencils on paper. What I love about Matta's work is how he lets the colors and lines kind of take over. It's like he's saying, "Okay, pencils, you do the talking." Look at how the yellow and red lines curve and loop around each other. It’s like a rollercoaster for your eyes! The surface is so alive with all these marks, but they are not chaotic, there is a rhythm to the meander. And then you notice how the colors bleed a little, like the paper is drinking them up. There's this spot on the bottom with these strange lying figures – almost hidden under a green swathe, it’s a little world of its own. Matta reminds me of Gorky; both of them were digging into something deep and strange inside the human psyche. It’s like they are saying, “Let’s not be too serious, let’s just see where the pencil takes us.”