Roberto Matta’s Prince of Blood (triptych) was not only the painter’s first contribution to Surrealism, it was also the first artistic attempt to visualize Einstein’s theory of space-time. In this episode of Anatomy of an Artwork, discover how Matta was inspired by Marcel Duchamp to create a work that gives visual form to a world in flux and contradictions.
Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, better known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile’s best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art.
In the summer of 1891, Claude Monet began to paint a row of poplar trees that lined the river Epte near his house at Giverny. The trees were auctioned off for timber shortly thereafter, but Monet made a deal with the purchaser to delay cutting them so he could continue to paint the trees through the autumn. Using a shallow rowboat that had slots in the bottom capable of holding several canvases at once, Monet painted twenty-four pictures of the poplars from his floating studio.