Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, 'Matta,' (b. 1911, Santiago, Chile; d. 2002, Civitavecchia, Italy), was born in Santiago, Chile. Matta's first one-artist exhibition was held at the Julian Levy Gallery, New York in 1940, and since that time, nearly 400 solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted, including MoMA's 1957 retrospective, which traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1957) and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1958). Matta is considered one of the great Surrealists and is widely acclaimed for his critical—and catalytic—influence on the development of Abstract Expressionism and on his contemporaries, including Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell.
