Painting with Yellow and Green

Matta’s large canvases evoke the cosmos, totems, and the human psyche. His work was, in his words, an attempt to create a “psychological morphology,” or a visible map of human consciousness. In this composition, mechanical forms float in a surreal space. The diagrammatic nature of the elements gives the impression that the painting can function as a kind of blueprint for the subconscious. This painting might also offer an example of what Matta called his “architecture of the imagination.”