"Mercedes Matter: A Retrospective Exhibition"
2010-01-23 until 2010-04-04
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
Malibu, CA, USA United States of America

The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University is pleased to present Mercedes Matter: A Retrospective Exhibition from January 23 through April 4, 2010. This is the first retrospective exhibition of paintings by Mercedes Matter, a key figure in the New York City avant-garde of the 1940s and '50s. Her extraordinary life and art spanned the 20th century and involved key movements, from early American modernism of the Stieglitz circle to European cubism to abstract expressionism. Her gestural paintings stand as fascinating examples of the revolutionary modern art movement known as the New York School.

When the Matter retrospective was recently shown at Baruch College in Manhattan, the Wall Street Journal declared it "one of the best New York painting exhibitions" and said it gives us "the monumental achievement of a monumental, but sadly overlooked, artist."

Born Mercedes Carles, Mercedes Matter (1913-2001) was the daughter of Arthur Carles, a pioneering American modern artist who studied with Matisse and exhibited with Alfred Stieglitz. Growing up surrounded by art, Mercedes was intent on becoming an artist and in the early 1930s became one of the first American students of renowned art teacher Hans Hofmann.

Through the Hofmann studio she forged friendships with young New York artists who would later create action painting, a spontaneous, improvisational style. She learned Hofmann's method of abstracting from nature by exaggerating spatial and color relationships. Exploring the creative potential of abstraction, she became one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists group, early proponents of nonobjective art, in 1936.

In 1941 she married Swiss photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter. Through him her circle widened to include such seminal European modernists as Fernand Leger and Alberto Giacometti. During World War II the couple relocated to Los Angeles, where they lived in Santa Monica Canyon while Herbert was employed by California designers Charles and Ray Eames.

After the war the Matters returned to New York City, where Mercedes played a key role in the development of abstract expressionism. Through her close and intimate relationships with seminal figures such as Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and her very close friends Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, she participated in the emergence of action painting. In recognition of her role, the artists made her the first female member of the legendary abstract expressionist "Artists' Club."

Matter's own art blossomed in the late 1940s and early '50s. Adopting the gestural brushwork of her friends, she produced powerfully energetic paintings. Always inspired by nature, her paintings reinterpreted landscape and still life into boldly inventive and sensual compositions. This trend culminated in her late charcoal still lifes--a series of powerfully original, black-and-white works begun in 1978 and continuing until her death. Critics consider these haunting, brooding images to be her most moving and important works.

Matter also left a legacy as an influential art instructor. As a dedicated student of Hofmann, she placed a great emphasis on teaching and in 1963 founded the New York Studio School in Greenwich Village, dedicated to training young artists through an experimental atelier curriculum.

Mercedes Matter: A Retrospective Exhibition features over 40 oil paintings and drawings created between 1921 and 1985. These works are accompanied by photographs, letters, and other ephemera by close friends such as Pollock, Hofmann, and Guston, offering a glimpse into her fascinating life.

This exhibition was curated by Ellen G. Landau, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University and noted scholar of American abstract expressionism. It is accompanied by a hardcover, 275-page exhibition catalog featuring essays by Landau as well as Michael Zakian, director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, and Sandra Kraskin, director of the Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College in New York, NY. This exhibition is on a national tour that includes the Sidney Mishkin Gallery; the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA; and Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in California