CHARLES MATTON

Born in Paris in 1931, Matton started his artistic career with painting in the 1950s. Although his figurative expression was at odds with the prevailing abstract mainstream of the Parisian art scene at the time, he always followed his own path. In 1960, the artist held his first retrospective at the then prestigious Cercle Volney in Paris. He then chose to stop exhibiting publicly but continued his practice in painting, sculpture and photography. During this time he achieved equally impressive success in illustration and filmmaking.

It was not until 1983 that Charles Matton held “Séductions Utopiques”, his first exhibition in over 20 years, which sparked great interest and brought him back to the forefront of the art scene. Then, in 1987, his major solo exhibition was held at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, in which the artist first showed his now sought-after ‘Boxes’, each participating in his “strategy of encirclement” and all fitting together into the coherent complexity of his work.

Since the 1990s, Matton’s work has been exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and several Parisian galleries. His work has also been included in important collections in countries like France, the United States, and Japan.

Charles Matton died of lung cancer in 2008. Sylvie Matton, the artist’s wife and trustee of the estate has collaborated with institutions in London and Berlin in organizing major retrospectives for the artist, and in 2022, granted representation to DUMONTEIL to continue promoting Charles Matton’s work.