Matta-Duchamp

when he visited the Soviet Union in 1936 to carry some
new plans for an air conditioning unit and windows
for the Centrosoyouz (the Central Union of Soviet Cooperatives).
The number of places he passed through,
and the major figures in the literary and artistic worlds
whom he met during this itinerant time is astonishing:
in 1935 Madrid, where he met Federico García Lorca,
who gave him a copy of his poem Llanto por Ignacio
Sánchez Mejías and an introductory note for Salvador
Dalí; in 1936 Berlin for the Olympic Games (still “politically
unconscious”, as he said); Helsinki where he
met Alvar Aalto; Lisbon where he was “adopted” by the
Chilean poet and activist Gabriela Mistral, who introduced
him to the radical cultural programmes of Revolutionary
Mexico, thereby wakening his political consciousness;
London where he mixed not only with the
constructivists Gropius and Moholy-Nagy but with the
surrealists Magritte, Roland Penrose and Henry Moore.
Matta made a sufficient impression on Magritte for the
Belgian artist to write to his friends the Scutenaires:
“Matta is a young man from South America… He
is making paintings a thousand times more interesting
than those of Miró. He has lots of ideas.” 16 This is not
only remarkable as a signal of the extraordinary impact
Matta had on those who encountered him, but also
16. Matta Paris p. 266
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