El Zuni by Roberto Matta

“The function of art,” the Surrealist Roberto Matta once stated, “is to unveil the enormous economic, cultural and emotional forces that materially interact in our lives and that constitute the real space in which we live.” In his paintings, Matta sought to expose those forces through the Surrealist practice of automatism, creating work in a free-associative state intended to conjure the unconscious.

After studying architecture in his native Chile, Matta, then 22, chose to pursue the field in Paris, where he mingled with stars of the avant-garde like Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dalí and Walter Gropius. In the late 1930s, he abandoned Paris, together with his job at Le Corbusier’s studio and (for a time) his career, for modern art’s new epicenter, New York City. There, he became a colleague of art legends like Marcel Duchamp and Arshile Gorky.

Although celebrated primarily for his work as a painter, Matta was an equally talented furniture designer. His furniture pieces, like his artworks, are the stuff of dreams. The back of his totem chair, for example, is composed of smiling, cartoonish creatures stacked on top of each other. In his MAgriTTA armchair, the top half of a plush green apple sticks out of large black bowler in homage to its namesake, the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte.

But perhaps the piece that most truly embodies his artistic philosophy is his 1966 Mallite modular system: a collection of spongy, undulating sofas and lounges that can be fitted together to form a puzzle-like room divider. The work, an original edition of which is in MoMA’s permanent collection, has in recent decades been a hard-to-find collectors’ item — until 2019, when Italian design brand Paradisoterrestre issued a reedition, available through Duplex.

Browse Roberto Matta's paintings and furniture designs on 1stDibs.

Historic Italian design brand Paradisoterrestre was conceived in the late Seventies by eclectic and subversive Dino Gavina (1922 – 2007) and relaunched in 2017 by Gherardo Tonelli. In its new course Paradisoterrestre presents a catalogue ranging ranging from re-editions of historical pieces - designed among the others by Roberto Matta, Kazuhide Takahama and Man Ray - to new collections in collaboration with designers and artists such as Pierre Gonalons, Tobia Scarpa, Paola Pivi and Allen Jones. Paradisoterrestre offers also a curated selection of vintage collectible design and artworks realized by great masters among which Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Ignazio Gardella, Vico Magistretti, Enzo Mari, Carlo Scarpa, Tobia Scarpa, Kazuhide Takahama, Augusto Betti, Alberto Biasi, Roberto Matta, ... In 2018 Paradisoterrestre opened its gallery in Bologna, a hybrid space between art and design, where major exhibitions took place: ULTRAMATTA - Roberto Matta's amazing adventure in the world of design (2019), TOBIA SCARPA - Dall’arte della misura silenziosamente (2020), Paola Pivi - Rock the art (2021), Augusto Betti - Trasversale • Pulsazione • Ritmo (2022) and Cento % Dino (2022).