Matta (Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren)

Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren was born in Santiago, Chile. After studying architecture, he went to Paris for an apprenticeship with architect Le Corbusier. He eventually left to join the Surrealist movement; he began painting fantastic, imaginative landscapes in 1938. In 1939 Matta fled to New York, where he socialized with other Surrealist émigrés including Marcel Duchamp, whom he met in 1944 and highly admired, and became a leading figure in the New York art world.