SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA.- The celebration of Art of the Americas continues this fall at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) with the special exhibition Matta On Paper: The John Todd Figi Collection, on view through February 6, 2005. The exhibition tells a compelling story of one collector�s passion for the vibrant Surrealist drawings, watercolors, gouaches, and several related paintings by Matta, the world-renowned Chilean-born artist, who many consider to be one of the greatest draftsmen of the twentieth century. Part of the series of thought-provoking exhibitions at the SBMA during 2004 that looks at the American experience from varying perspectives, this select grouping from the late 1930s and 1940s represents the critical period when, living and working in New York, Matta exercised significant influence on United States Surrealism and the New York School of Abstract Expressionism.

These key works from the collection of John Todd Figi demonstrate how Matta became one of the leading practitioners of automatism, a method of unconscious composition developed by the European Surrealists. Inspired by contemporary ideas in psychology, he formulated an intuitive, free-flowing approach to drawing in order to give expression to his inner thoughts and feelings. Described as �a fuse that lit up the New York scene,� Matta helped shape the major shift from veristic Surrealism�the form epitomized by Salvador Dal� where dreams are represented with a hyperrealism�to an abstract, biomorphic Surrealism that was critical to the United States artists Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock.

In profiling Matta�s works on paper and related paintings from the 1930s and 1940s known as �psychological morphologies� or �inscapes,� the exhibition reveals one collector�s dedication to fully represent what many consider to be Matta�s most significant period. Some twenty years ago, John Todd Figi began his collection of Latin American art by acquiring Pre-Columbian art. While attending a New York auction of ancient, Pre-Hispanic art, however, Figi was stunned when his eye glimpsed a painting by Mexican modernist Rufino Tamayo. Since that life-changing moment, which led to his acquisition of that riveting painting, Figi has amassed one of the most prominent collections of Latin American art in the United States. While he has collected widely in the area of modern Latin American art, his main focus now is the art of Matta, primarily the artist�s works on paper, which are thought to be equal in importance and innovation to his works on canvas.

In Figi�s own words, �I think that Matta is an amazing draftsman. What he did early on in drawing is always so much more spontaneous to me. I am really drawn to it. I never met Matta, but through the spontaneity, I feel I can see him, touch him �. Sometimes at night I will just walk around the house and stand in front of the artworks. On other nights I will go back again and look at the same works and they will look different. You almost wonder if the hand of Matta came in overnight and changed them! When I think about Matta and his practice of automatism and then look at his works on paper, I think, �That can�t be.� I mean the creative imagination and technical finesse are extraordinary!�

Matta was born in Santiago, Chile in 1911. After studying architecture at the Universidad Cat�lica in Santiago, he traveled to Paris in 1933 and worked for two years as a draftsman in the Paris studio of the famed architect Le Corbusier. While visiting his aunt in Madrid, he met poets and artists such as Federico Garc�a Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Dal�, and Andr� Breton. Impressed by Matta's drawings, Breton invited him to join the Surrealist group in 1937. Influenced by his association with the Surrealists and by Marcel Duchamp's theories of movement and process, Matta began to explore the realm of the subconscious and to develop an imagery of cosmic creation and destruction. By 1939, World War II drove Matta to exile in New York where he held his first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1941. In 1948, Matta returned to Europe, settling permanently in Paris.
The second-to-last exhibition in the SBMA�s Art of the Americas Celebration, Matta On Paper is unique in this yearlong exhibition series because it features the collector�s viewpoint, looking at a Latin American artist through the eyes of John Todd Figi. The series is centered by the dramatic reinstallation of the Museum�s permanent collection, which showcases art from Latin America and the United States side by side for the first time ever. Art of the Americas began with the groundbreaking innovations in painting and photography by leading modernists such as Georgia O�Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz who changed the course of American art, and culminates with the Conceptual art of the contemporary California-based artist David Ireland.