Matta (Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren)
Burn, Baby, Burn (L'escalade)1965-1966

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Wide panoramic abstract painting with tangled black mechanical forms over coral-orange at left, billowing gray at center with glowing yellow accents, and sweeping white loops over green at right

Large-scale mixed-media work on paper with energetic, chaotic composition; fragmented mechanical and electronic forms in black and gray scatter across a vivid red-orange ground, with bursts of white smoke-like marks and small flashes of blue, yellow, and green; gestural line work and layered washes throughout.

Large-scale mixed-media painting with dynamic, swirling composition in brown, grey, white, and orange tones; a elongated black form spans the upper edge above dripping multicolored marks, while looping white lines and smoky washes weave through clustered abstract and semi-mechanical forms across the canvas.

Large-scale painting with gestural brushwork depicting a fragmented automobile grille and headlights emerging from swirling gray and white forms, with vivid green and yellow passages in the lower half.

Artist or Maker: Matta (Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren)
Chile, active France, Italy, Mexico, and the United States, 1911-2002
Title: Burn, Baby, Burn (L'escalade)
Date Made: 1965-1966
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 117 5/16 × 386 1/4 × 2 in. (298 × 981 × 5.08 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of the 2009 Collectors Committee with additional funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2009.42
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Roberto Matta painted Burn, Baby, Burn in response to the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles in 1965, adopting the uprising’s rally cry as the title of his sweeping canvas. The cry “Burn, baby! Burn!” was originally coined by the charismatic radio DJ Magnificent Montague (b. 1928), who shouted it every time a piece of soul music excited him. This watershed event was unleashed when a California highway patrol officer unjustly arrested a black man. The imploding satellites hint at the speed with which the news traveled, while the painting’s intense gestural brushstrokes echo the agitation of the event.

Born in Chile, Matta trained as an architect and worked with Le Corbusier in Paris from 1935 to 1937. He took up painting in the late 1930s, joining the Surrealist movement in 1937. Two years later, he moved to New York, catalyzing the development of Abstract Expressionism. In the 1950s and 1960s, Matta became exceedingly disillusioned with the atrocities of war—including the Algerian Revolution and the Vietnam War. Like Picasso’s Guernica (1937)—a work that Matta greatly admired and which he helped to install at the Paris 1937 Universal Exposition—Burn, Baby, Burn is a bold indictment of oppression and violence worldwide.

Ilona Katzew

2024
Selected Bibliography: Matta in the 1950s and 1960s. New York: Pace, 2015.
Matta: Five Decades of Painting: Works from the Collections of Federica Matta and Ramuntcho Matta. New York: PaceWildenstein, 2009.
Copyright: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

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Matta (Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren)
Burn, Baby, Burn (L'escalade)1965-1966

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Artist or Maker: Matta (Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren)
Chile, active France, Italy, Mexico, and the United States, 1911-2002
Title: Burn, Baby, Burn (L'escalade)
Date Made: 1965-1966
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 117 5/16 × 386 1/4 × 2 in. (298 × 981 × 5.08 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of the 2009 Collectors Committee with additional funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2009.42
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Roberto Matta painted Burn, Baby, Burn in response to the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles in 1965, adopting the uprising’s rally cry as the title of his sweeping canvas. The cry “Burn, baby! Burn!” was originally coined by the charismatic radio DJ Magnificent Montague (b. 1928), who shouted it every time a piece of soul music excited him. This watershed event was unleashed when a California highway patrol officer unjustly arrested a black man. The imploding satellites hint at the speed with which the news traveled, while the painting’s intense gestural brushstrokes echo the agitation of the event.

Born in Chile, Matta trained as an architect and worked with Le Corbusier in Paris from 1935 to 1937. He took up painting in the late 1930s, joining the Surrealist movement in 1937. Two years later, he moved to New York, catalyzing the development of Abstract Expressionism. In the 1950s and 1960s, Matta became exceedingly disillusioned with the atrocities of war—including the Algerian Revolution and the Vietnam War. Like Picasso’s Guernica (1937)—a work that Matta greatly admired and which he helped to install at the Paris 1937 Universal Exposition—Burn, Baby, Burn is a bold indictment of oppression and violence worldwide.

Ilona Katzew

2024
Selected Bibliography: Matta in the 1950s and 1960s. New York: Pace, 2015.
Matta: Five Decades of Painting: Works from the Collections of Federica Matta and Ramuntcho Matta. New York: PaceWildenstein, 2009.
Copyright: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris