Roberto Matta: prices up 165% in five years

[18.12.2002]

 

Roberto Matta, one of the last of the Surrealists, has just died in Italy. The top surrealist painters have long been stars on the auction floor, but enthusiasm for the Chilean artist took a while to materialise.

Roberto MATTA joined the surrealist movement in 1937 and exhibited in the first International Surrealism Exhibition in Paris 1938. He travelled extensively, visiting France, Spain, Scandinavia, the UK and Italy. Living as an exile in the US, he exhibited his paintings at the Julian Levy gallery and Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of the Century, influencing the abstract expressionists. But Matta remained in obscurity – for two reasons. He was expelled from the Surrealist group in 1948, though he rejoined eleven years later. And his work in the sixties was heavily influenced by his political commitment.

In the last decade or so, his work was wholly reappraised. EUR100 invested in 1997 is worth on average EUR265 in December 2002. Disaster of Mysticism bought for USD1.5 million in 1995 was sold for USD2.4 million in November 2001. This is the artist’s most expensive painting to date. Another fine piece from 1939 (collectors’ favourite period) is Inscape (Psychological Morphology No. 104). It was frequently under the hammer, with prices going through the roof every time. Most recently, it fetched USD500,000 in 1994 and USD975,000 in 2001.

Roberto Matta’s works appeal to a fairly wide market, thanks largely to the diversity of his output. Collectors hail from the US, Europe and South America. But his best pieces tend to be sold in the US, which has accounted for 76% of total turnover. As well as producing paintings, that now sell at around the USD50,000 mark, Matta was a sculptor and prolific engraver.