Matta: The Open Cube

To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Chilean artist Matta, which falls in 2011, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, Spain) is presenting a new installation of the cycle L’Honni aveuglant (The Dazzling Outcast), comprising five paintings from the Museum’s Permanent Collection. This installation exactly reproduces the one that Matta created for the first time in the Galerie Alexandre Iolas in Paris in 1966. Shown alongside it is Untitled of 1942-1943, another work by the artist from the Museum’s collection.

The installation consists of a large canvas on the end wall entitled Great Expectations; two on the side walls entitled The blinding Outcast and The Where at High Tide; and two more on the ceiling entitled Where Madness dwells, A and B respectively. This is a unique and spectacular installation through which Matta aimed to envelop the viewer in his pictorial universe that was filled with literary, spiritual and artistic references.

Rather than locating the viewer before the work of art in the manner of a window, Matta introduces us into it, locating us at the centre of the cube as if we were one of its six sides and making us feel possessed by the work.

Throughout his career Matta (Santiago de Chile, 1911 – Civitavecchia, 2002) was notably interested in the study of the dimensions and their representation and spatial investigation was consequently one of the fundamental aspects of his artistic thinking. For Matta the "open cube" represented the total work of art, enveloping the viewer and making him or her its protagonist.

Date: until October 23
Place: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Paseo del Prado, 8. 28014 Madrid. España.
Opening hours: from Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 11pm. September 12 and 19 from 10am to 7pm.