Mercedes Matter (1913-2001) Tabletop Still Life, 1936–37 Estate stamp verso
Oil on paper laid on canvas 20x24in.(50.8x61cm)
Provenance
The Estate of the artist Private collection
Exhibitions
The Miskin Gallery, Baruch College, New York, Mercedes Matter, A Retrospective, October 29– December 14, 2009. Travelled: The Weisman Museum, Pepperdine, CA, January 23–April 4, 2010; Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY, June 18–August 1, 2010; The Figge Museum, Davenport, IA, September 4, 2010–January 2, 2011.
Literature
Landau, Ellen, Phyllis Braff, Sandra Kraskin, Michael Zakian, and Graham Nickson. Mercedes
Matter (New York: MB Art Publishing Co., 2010), ill., 148, pl. 49.
Description
A central but overlooked figure of the New York School in the 1930s, Mercedes Matter (1913- 2001) was born in New York in 1913, the daughter of American modernist artist Arthur Carles. During the 1930s, Matter worked for the Works Progress Administration alongside Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Lee Krasner, with whom she became lifelong friends. An original member of the American Abstract Artists and one of the first female members of the storied Club in the early 1950s, Matter played an important role in the New York School, particularly through her founding of the New York Studio School. The School was founded on her belief that extended studio classes, which at that point had fallen out of art school curricula, were necessary for ‘the painfully slow education of the senses’ which Matter considered an artist’s calling.
Matter’s early work in her twenties include Fauvist inspired still lifes, such as this work “Table Top Still Life,” created around 1936-1937. Characterized by one critic as “crowded, jostling, mountainous still lifes,” this body of work speaks to the artist’s precocious development of her own energetic vocabulary of abstract expressionism at a time when it was not yet a fully codified style. Around this time in 1936, the artist produced numerous still lifes set on tilted tables. In this particular painting, Matter fragments the objects to such a degree that they are hardly recognizable in a traditional representational sense. Rather, the different elements swirl in space, their high-keyed colors reflecting the influence of Matisse and Cezanne, as well as that of Hans Hofmann, the German emigré artist who had a profound impact on Matter’s development as an artist. For Hofmann, the essential meaning of the verb “to paint” was “to form with color,” and as such, he understood painting as the ability to exploit color constructively, a view that Matter implicitly adopted during this period.
Mercedes Matter continued to paint and teach up until her death at age 87 in 2001. New York Studio School, which she founded in 1964, still operates today. Her legacy lives on not just through her work but also through her teaching at the School, which influenced younger generations of artists. The founding manifesto of the School was signed by de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Mark Rothko, and others; early faculty included Philip Guston, Alex Katz, and Meyer Schapiro.