Morfología psicológica (Psychological Morphology)

After studying architecture and working for a time in the studio of Le Corbusier, Roberto Matta joined the Surrealist circle, making his first oil paintings in 1938, coinciding with his stay in the town of Trévignon, Brittany. He then began his Inscape series, based on the concept of “psychological morphologies”, later considered examples of absolute automatism by André Breton. Indeed, in this type of creation, in his attempt to give shape to and bring to light the hiddenmost visions of the mind, Matta bases his work on the most authentic automatism techniques proposed by Surrealism from its very earliest days. The painter offers his theories on the subject: “In the terrain of consciousness, a psychological morphology would be the graphic representation of ideas. If we want to remain within the medium of transformation, this graphic representation must be conceived before the optic images give the ideas shape. […] A morphology of this kind will be perceived when the eye and the consciousness make immediate and impulsive graphic images, which the convulsive emotion of man will draw in a new art. The perception of the growth and features of the objects made simultaneously will make it possible to also perceive the psychological biology of the object. The shared psychology of opposites in a single idea object remains pulsating without deformation in a psychological morphology, while the Symbolist essays known as paranoiac-critical are based on a transformation of optical images in a caricaturistic sense, as happens with the forms of abstract art.”

Paloma Esteban Leal