The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Features Roberto Matta's Dazzling Outcast Cycle

Written by Pablo Rodríguez Tuesday, 27 September 2011 22:37

Madrid, Spain  - To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Chilean artist Roberto Matta, which falls in 2011, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting a new installation of the cycle 'L'Honni aveuglant (The Dazzling Outcast)', comprising five paintings from the Museum's Permanent Collection. This installation exactly reproduces the one that Matta created for the first time in the Galerie Alexandre Iolas in Paris in 1966. Shown alongside it is Untitled of 1942-1943, another work by the artist from the Museum's collection. Unde the title of "The Open Cube", the exhibition will remain on view until October 23rd.

The installation consists of a large canvas on the end wall entitled Great Expectations; two on the side walls entitled The blinding Outcast and The Where at High Tide; and two more on the ceiling entitled Where Madness dwells, A and B respectively. This is a unique and spectacular installation through which Matta aimed to envelop the viewer in his pictorial universe that was filled with literary, spiritual and artistic references. Rather than locating the viewer before the work of art in the manner of a window, Matta introduces us into it, locating us at the centre of the cube as if we were one of its six sides and making us feel possessed by the work. Throughout his career Matta (Santiago de Chile, 1911 - Civitavecchia, 2002) was notably interested in the study of the dimensions and their representation and spatial investigation was consequently one of the fundamental aspects of his artistic thinking. For Matta the "open cube"represented the total work of art, enveloping the viewer and making him or her its protagonist. On Saturdays in October the installation will remain open until 11pm while the Museum's Auditorium will present a Chilean Film Cycle, showing El húsar de la muerte (1925) by Pedro Sienna; B-Happy (2007) by Gonzalo Justiniano; and El Brindis (2007) by Shai Agosin. Films start at 7pm.


The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Spanish), is one of the three Madrid museums that make up the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofia (modern and contemporary) galleries. The collections’s roots lie in the privately owned Thyssen-Bonremisza collection, once the second largest private art collection in the world (after the British Royal Collection). The collection started in the 1920s as a private collection by Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon (1875–1947). In a reversal of the movement of European paintings to the United States during this period, one of the Baron's sources was the collections of American millionaires coping with the Great Depression and inheritance taxes, from which he acquired such exquisite old master paintings as Ghirlandaio's ‘Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni’ (once in the Morgan Library) and Carpaccio's ‘Knight’ (from the collection of Otto Kahn). The collection was later expanded by Heinrich's son Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921–2002), who re-assembled most of the works from his relatives' collections (distributed after his father’s death) and proceeded to acquire large numbers of new works. In 1985, the Baron married Carmen Cervera (a former Miss Spain 1961) and introduced her to art-collecting. Carmen's influence was decisive in persuading the Baron to decide on the future of his collection and cede the collection to Spain. When Baron Thyssen decided to open his collection to the public, he initially tried to have his museum in the Villa Favorita in Switzerland expanded, when this proved impossible, a Europe-wide search for a new was home started. The competition was won in 1986 when the Spanish government came to an agreement to provide a home for the collection (the 19th century Villahermosa Palace close to the Prado in Madrid) and fund the museum in return for the loan of the collection for a minimum of nine and a half years. Pritzker prize winning Spanish architect, Rafael Moneo was employed to redesign and extend the building and the museum opened in 1992. However, so impressed were the Thyssen-Bornemiszas with the building and Spain’s commitment to the collection, that even before it opened, they were negotiating with the Spanish government to make the museum permanent. In 1993, the Spanish government agreed to buy the collection (valued at up to 1.5 billion dollars) for $350 million and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum became a permanent fixture in Madrid. The museum currently houses two collections from the Thyssen-Bornemiszas, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, acquired by the Spanish government from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza on permanent display since the museum opened in 1992 and the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, owned by the baron’s widow and held by the museum since 2004 on loan. These two collections comprise over one thousand works of art (mostly paintings), with which the museum offers a stroll through the history of European painting, from its beginning in the 13th century to the close of the 20th century. The Baroness remains involved with the museum, deciding the salmon pink tone of the interior and in May 2006 campaigning against plans to redevelop the Paseo del Prado as she thought the works and traffic would damage the collection and the museum's appearance. A collection of works from the museum is housed in Barcelona in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.museothyssen.org

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