Matta-Duchamp

Remembering Matta
– the first artist of infinite matter?
(or maybe just of “the infinite”)
It was the outstanding poet, writer, art critic and museum
curator Wieland Schmied (1929–2014) who first
personally introduced me to Matta. Wieland had been
working at the New National Gallery in Berlin in 1980.
With my colleagues and friends Christos M. Joachimides
and Nicholas Serota, I was then absorbed in researching
painters to include in the exhibition ‘A New Spirit in
Painting’, which was being organised at short notice at
the Royal Academy of Arts, London. It was to open on
15 January 1981. ‘A New Spirit’ featured 38 European
and North American painters – no women, which was
barely commented on at the time – whose work, as was
observed in the catalogue’s preface, was ‘full of expression
and devoid of mannerism’. This “spirit” was heralded
as a counter to the Minimalist art that was then
the principal current art making orthodoxy.
I’d always been aware of Matta’s work, but it was
Wieland who helped me recognise his singular genius
and who arranged for us to meet. Wieland himself was
an extraordinary figure: a poet, art historian and friend
( 73 )