Roberto Matta was a Chilean-born artist known for his unique blending of Surrealism with Abstract Expressionism. Like his friend Arshile Gorky, Matta’s otherworldly paintings and prints explored the unconscious through methods of Surrealist automatism. With fluid brushstrokes of rich color the artist described nebulous spaces inhabited by floating organic and architectonic forms, as seen in the hallmark work Les Roses sont belles (1951). “I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment,” he once declared. Born Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurran on November 11, 1911 in Santiago, Chile, he graduated with a degree in architecture from the Catholic University of Santiago in 1932 before moving...