Condors and Carrion (Condors y carroña)

Roberto Matta

1941

In this pencil-and-crayon drawing, Matta assembles a surreal, suspended landscape of winged and organic forms to give visible shape to inner psychological and cosmic forces.

The paper feels like an airy void pierced by smoky smears, delicate architectural scribbles, fluttering biomorphic figures and small, jewel-like orbs whose pale color accents and fine lines create a tense, hovering stillness.

Created in 1941, the work channels Surrealist explorations of the unconscious into spectral spatial compositions that helped link European Surrealism with later American abstraction by treating drawing as a topography of the psyche.

Palette

Art Terms

Surrealism Drawing Pencil Colored pencil Biomorphic Abstraction Automatism

Exhibitions

Children's Holiday Carnival of Modern Art

1949

Latin-American Art, 1931–1966, from the Museum Collection

1967

Drawings in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art

1947

Matta

1957