Matta-Duchamp

to grasp by looking at the paintings with the extraordinary
variety of forms beating together, whose titles
indicate powerful feelings: La veille de la mort (morphologie
psychologique de l’angoisse), or Morphologie
psychologique de l’espoir, both of 1938.
*
New York: Les Grands transparents
Matta and his wife left France for New York in October
1939, on the same boat as Tanguy. After the German
occupation of Paris in June 1940, many of the
surrealists took refuge in the Americas; Breton and his
family reached New York in 1941, and Duchamp finally
got there in 1942. New York became the new centre
for Surrealism, and Matta was at the core of its revived
activities. He was also, together with Gordon Onslow
Ford who arrived in 1940, swiftly in dialogue with the
young American painters. Like others among the European
refugees, he gravitated to the New School for
Social Research, which had been founded in 1919 as
a progressive centre for higher education for adults by
a group of American intellectuals. Among the teachers
were distinguished names in the fields of the social
sciences, anthropology, politics and the arts. It was a
haven for scholars as well as artists and writers flee-
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