Drifts and Derivations

Roberto Matta The Red Sun Colored pencil on paper, 1938

Roberto Matta Personnages and Automobile Colored pencil, pastel, chalk on paper, 1938

Roberto Matta Psychological Morphology (Meeting The Muse) Graphite, colored pencil on paper, c 1940

Roberto Matta Automatic Drawing Graphite, colored pencil on paper, 1938

Roberto Matta Star Travel Colored pencil, pastel on paper, 1938

Roberto Matta Drawing for Invasion of the Night (2) Ink, graphite on paper, 1940

Roberto Matta Star, Flower, Personnage and Stone Colored pencil, pastel on paper, 1938

"Drifts and Derivations. Experiences, Journeys and Morphologies" - Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, May 5 - August 23, 2010. Curated by Lisette Lagnado and María Berríos.

"The premise for this exhibition consists in investigating some proposals for the urbus of the future in Latin American cities, which have remained at the margins of official narratives in the so-called First World. Does this involve a return to thinking about digressions and the New Babylon by Constant (1920-2005) from new urban initiatives and projects that have not been built? The different Brazilian and Chilean architectural concepts that form the subject of this exhibition share a humanist, visionary basis in their way of approaching the relationship between public space and collective life, topography and urbanism. This is reflected in drawings, texts and architectural models by Flavio de Carvalho (1899-1973), Juan Borchers (1910-1975), Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), Roberto Matta (1911-2002), and Sergio Bernardes (1919-2002), and in the Valparaíso School’s communal teaching. Poet-architects were torn between a growing drive towards modernity and technology’s promise to reduce working hours and increase leisure time. Their goal was to expand the space for homo ludens and implement a community-based life. In the case of Brazil, this was based on Carvalho’s take on Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagous Manifesto (1928), while in Chile it involved the assumption of values based on hospitality and accessibility."