Or save it to favorites and we'll tell you if this item goes on sale!
- Get the Chairish App
- to view in your space
Sebastian "Batan" Matta-Clark, Bottom of Summer Oceans, Abstract Surrealist Painting, 1974
- Get the Chairish App
- to view in your space
Details
Description
Sebastian Matta-Clark was born in 1943, twin of Gordon Matta-Clark. Son Of Chilean Surrealist Roberto Matta
Sebastian, known as Batan …
more
Sebastian Matta-Clark was born in 1943, twin of Gordon Matta-Clark. Son Of Chilean Surrealist Roberto Matta
Sebastian, known as Batan died in 1976.
He showed 3 exhibitions in his short lifetime, two in Gallerie Lolas in New York, and one in La Galerie du Dragon in Paris. He exhibited posthumously in Paris, a solo exhibit in 2006, at Gallerie Samy Kinge, Paris, and part of a group exhibit in 2013 at the Maison Rouge, Paris.
From a young age, Batan and his twin brother drew and were budding artists, He continued to grow into a great artist with mythic qualities to his work. With Teeny and Marcel Duchamp for godparents, Matta-Clark was exposed from an early age to a wide circle of avant-garde artistic influences.
His half-brother, also an artist, Pablo Echaurren, shared that it's really a shame that his art did not become well known in his lifetime, He should have received the recognition he merited.
John Sebastian Bata Matta-Clark’s New York was a tougher, grittier, more tumultuous place than the stylish television backdrop it often seems today: his father, the Surrealist painter Roberto Echaurren Matta, studied in Chile and worked under Le Corbusier for a time. Matta-Clark's parents were artists: the American painter Anne Clark, and the Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta . His twin brother, John Sebastian (called Batan ), was also an artist. His parents had met in Paris, but due to the imminence of World War II, they settled in New York like many other artists of the time, where Gordon and his brother were born.
Born on June 22, 1943, he spent his childhood in West Village, Manhattan, where he attended private schools. His parents separated definitively in 1948 and Matta returned to Europe. From that moment, the contacts between father and son will be intermittent and devoid of familiarity. However, with some frequency Gordon would travel to France and Chile with his brother Batán , where his paternal grandparents resided.
His work influenced the likes of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, yet the Latin-American painter remains relatively unknown. Now there are signs that his reputation is slowly on the up.
It’s safe to say that Manhattan gallerist Julien Levy had rather a good eye.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Joseph Cornell and Henri Cartier-Bresson were among the artists given their first New York shows at his gallery.
Arguably the most important exhibition held there, though, was by a lesser-known painter: Roberto Matta. Matta had made his name as a Surrealist in Paris and, as the Second World War broke out, decided to move to the US. Levy gave him a solo show in 1940 and the impact it had on a generation of new American artists was huge.
Like Miró, Matta championed an automatist form of Surrealism, creating work through the unplanned gestures of his brush, which moved faster than his mind could think.
Matta referred to his paintings as “inscapes”, shorthand for landscapes of the mind, as if he were tapping into the unconscious every time he painted. His practice would influence the likes of Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky immensely.
In short, he was a vital bridge between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, and any analysis of the shift of artistic power from Paris to New York in the 20th century must surely include Matta.
He isn’t, however, as well-remembered today as he might be. He’s not a household name in the way Dalí, Giacometti and the other artists mentioned so far in this piece are. He’s often even confused with his own son, the sculptor Gordon Matta-Clark.
Why is this? In part, one suspects, because he came to Surrealism late; in 1937, to be precise, some 13 years after the movement had been launched and by which time all its major works had been painted. (Matta trained as an architect and worked for two years in the office of Le Corbusier in Paris).
Though a key influence on the Abstract Expressionists, he was never actually one of their number. His work, broadly speaking, was figurative. Clement Greenberg, the era’s art critic par excellence and Ab Ex painters’ cheerleader-in-chief, derided him as “the prince of comic-strippers” – a moniker that Matta never entirely managed to shake off. In 1948, he returned to Europe.
Another reason Matta fails to be accorded his due is nationality. Born in Santiago, Chile, he moved to Europe only in his twenties and is still often pigeonholed as a Latin-American artist. He has never quite made it into the Western canon; his work still tends to appear in Latin-American (rather than Modern) art sales at auction.
Matta moved back to Chile in 1970, when Salvador Allende’s socialist Popular Unity party won power. He painted a number of public murals in its support – one of which, El Primer Gol del Pueblo Chileno (“The First Goal of the Chilean People”), long thought lost, was recovered in 2008.
It had been deleted with 18 coats of paint during the dictatorial regime of General Augusto Pinochet. (Pinochet seized office from Allende in a coup in 1973 and immediately put Matta’s name on a “hit list”. The artist, fearing that no amount of bodyguards would be enough to protect him, fled the country.)
The Seventies was a particularly bad decade for Matta – personally as well as politically. He lost both his twin sons in their mid-thirties: Sebastian committed suicide in 1976 after a long battle with schizophrenia and Gordon died of pancreatic cancer in 1978.
The former is the subject of For Batan, a painting which forms part of Intesa Sanpaolo’s stellar collection of modern and contemporary art (Batan was Sebastian’s nickname). In truth, it’s hard to make out many direct references in it by Matta to his son: his art was too elusive for such things.
less
Shipping Options
Standard Returns & Cancellations
Return Policy - All sales are final 48 hours after delivery, unless otherwise specified in the description of the product.
Extended Return for Trade
- Expands return window for trade members to 14 days (12 days more than our standard return policy)
- Trade member to notify Chairish of intent to return within 14 days of item delivery
- Buyer refunded item cost. Buyer pays return shipping cost
- Does not apply to damages that occur post-delivery
Questions about the item?
Related Collections
- Oversized Paintings
- Abstract Oil Paintings
- 19th Century Paintings
- French Oil Paintings
- California Paintings
- 19th Century Oil Paintings
- Abstract Landscape Painting
- Mughal Paintings
- Large Scale Paintings
- Lemon Paintings
- Alice Ford Paintings
- Burlap Paintings
- Bathing Paintings
- Emanuel Romano Paintings
- English Country Home Paintings
- Angel Paintings
- Edgar Degas Paintings
- Queen Elizabeth Paintings
- Patrick Nagel Paintings
- Plein Air Paintings
- Amedeo Clemente Modigliani Paintings
- Dibond Paintings
- Earthenware Paintings
- Paintings in Midland, TX
- Haley Mathewes Paintings
Returns
- Does not arrive
- Is broken during transit
- Is entirely different than what you purchased
- Some made-to-order items and a limited selection of other items (noted as non-refundable in the returns and cancellations section of the product description)
-
Orders where Free Local Pickup or Seller Managed Local Delivery were selected:
- Upon inspection, If you decide not to move forward with the purchase, you or your agent must refuse the item at the time of pickup/delivery from the seller
- Once you have taken possession of the item, all sales are final
- International, cross-border returns may require different processes depending on the countries between which the item is shipping to/from, and the buyer is responsible and duties (if applicable, on cross-border orders).
- On approved returns, the buyer is responsible for the full cost of return packing and shipping.
Cancellations
- Prior to shipping or local pickup, buyers may cancel an order for any reason, with the exception of some Made-to-Order items, where supplies have been purchased or work begun on the item.
- Please notify us within 24 hours of purchase if you would like to cancel an order, as prompt cancellation will reduce the likelihood that you will incur return shipping charges.
- Once shipping or pickup has been initiated, the cancellation will be considered a return and you will be responsible for the cost of shipping.
Shipping
Note: Made-to-Order items typically include a lead time or custom delivery window that is added to the delivery time.
- Chairish Express In-Home Delivery
- Chairish Express In-Home deliveries are currently only offered for international cross-border shipments.
- The item will be delivered to your home and placed in the desired room. The delivery service includes unpacking, inspecting, and removing packaging materials; and does not include installation or setting up the item.
- Shipping charges start at $999 and vary based on the size, weight, packaging, and/or the value of the item.
- Deliveries can take anywhere from 6 to 9 weeks to be delivered.
- Chairish Freight Delivery
- Delivered in a crate, to your front door.
- You will need tools and/or equipment to open the crate.
- Shipping charges start at $799 and vary based on the size, weight, packaging, and/or the value of the item.
- Chairish Freight deliveries can take anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks.
- Only available in selected markets.
- Chairish In-Home Delivery
- The item will be delivered to your home and placed in the desired room. The delivery service includes unpacking, inspecting, and removing packaging materials; and does not include installation or setting up the item.
-
Shipping charges start at $149 and based on the size and the distance between pickup and delivery
(for approximate values see table):
Delivery Type Within 50 miles radius Within 1,500 miles radius Over 1,500 miles radius International Cross-Border Shipping Price $149 - $299 $199 - $799 $449 - $899 Over $899 Transit Time 2 to 4 weeks 3 to 6 weeks 4 to 8 weeks 12 to 17 weeks - For some items, the shipping price may vary depending on the size, weight, material and/or value of the item.
- Free Local Pickup
- Local pickup allows customers to inspect an item at the time of pickup and avoid shipping costs.
- Following purchase, a confirmation email is sent to the email address associated with the order, and includes: Pickup Verification & Seller's contact information
- Please contact the seller within 5 days to coordinate pickup
- Once the item has been picked up (by you or your representative) it cannot be returned or refunded.
- Free Shipping
- Free shipping may be offered on select listings.
- Smaller items are typically delivered within 2 weeks of the purchase date, while larger items and furniture may take up to 6 weeks for delivery.
- When an item with Free Shipping is returned, the cost of return shipping fees will be charged to the buyer.
- Parcel Delivery
- Shipment is arranged through recognized carriers such as UPS, FedEx, and DHL.
- Only pieces that can be safely packed in a box or envelope may be shipped via parcel.
- Shipping charges start at $9 — and vary based on the size, weight, packaging and the value of the item.
Delivery Type US Domestic International Cross-Border Shipping Price $9 - $99 $39 - $499 Transit Time 1 to 2 weeks 2 to 4 weeks - Seller Managed Delivery
- Shipping is offered and managed by the seller, through a shipper of the seller’s choice.
- Available on items at the seller’s discretion.
- Seller Managed Local Delivery
- Local curbside delivery is offered and managed by the seller, within a limited geography.
- Following purchase, a confirmation email is sent to the confirmation email address associated with the order, and includes: Pickup Verification Code & Seller’s contact information
- Please contact the seller within 5 days to coordinate delivery.
The Chairish Buyer Guarantee
Make an Offer
Fees and shipping costs will be calculated in the next step
Have questions about how offers work? Learn more or .