Roberto Matta 1911-2002 at Ca' Pesaro - Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna is the first institutional exhibition in Italy dedicated to the Chilean artist; it aims to convey his eclectic personality and the expression of a wide range of ideas and modes of knowledge: scientific, cultural, and philosophical. A citizen of the world, a visionary, a multifaceted author, a painter and draftsman, an architect and sculptor, a militant artist, Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (Santiago, Chile, 1911 - Civitavecchia, 2002) is certainly one of the most important artists of the Twentieth century and, at the same time, one of the least celebrated and represented figures in Italian museum collections.

The exhibition at Ca' Pesaro is part of the projects of in-depth study, research, and rediscovery of Twentieth-century authors carried out by the Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna in Venice, starting from the masterpieces kept in its collection - in this case, "Alba sulla terra" from 1952.

The exhibition also recalls and renews his historical connection with Venice. In the lagoon city, Matta arrived for the first time in 1948, among the artists of the Peggy Guggenheim collection hosted in the epochal exhibition at the Pavilion of Greece. Also in Venice in 1953, during the exhibition "Matta 1949-1953" at the Correr Museum organized by Galleria del Cavallino and under the auspices of Carlo Cardazzo, a work by Matta entered for the first time in an Italian public collection: exhibited in the Napoleonica Hall, "Alba sulla terra" was purchased by the Municipality of Venice for Ca' Pesaro.

A "official" protagonist of Surrealism, whose centenary will be celebrated in 2024, Matta developed his own particular visual language; his universe is surprising, complex, articulated, not ascribable to a single language. Irrationality, the unconscious, psychic automatism, and the deforming matter, heritage of the surreal, merge with the fundamental experience in Paris as a collaborator of Le Corbusier. At the same time, the geometric, architectural, and constructive component in the forced perspectives and the trespassing towards the fourth dimension, which characterize his mature production, retain the echo of his love for poetry and youthful closeness to Breton and his associates. The exhibition aims to celebrate the ingenious and greatly influential artist of Chilean origins, and his multifaceted creativity, expressed in the production of paintings, drawings, sculptures, architectural projects, and design objects.