![]() Thus, Matilde came to Havana with her works virtually under her arms. Even though Matilde’s artworks sell for lump sums of money in auctions and out in the market, and museums and public collections begin now to realize the historic gap of not having a “Matilde”, she refuses to let go of those “children” that were shrugged off for so long. Her work endured some kind of self-enclosure, a condition that was clearly shown by the fact that most of her pieces –the most valuable ones, by the way– are hanging on the walls of her house in Santiago de Chile. Once again, Matilde’s intentions to make kinetic art a part of the national poetics were thwarted.Īpproximately for four decades she remained that way, nearly buried in oblivion, just creating for herself. It was at that moment when she introduced real motion and light in her artworks that gave them a more objectifying and dynamic character that also included the spectator’s hands-on involvement.īack in Chile in 1975, she mustered up the support of some of her colleagues from the School of Design at the University of Chile –where she taught– and founded the Center for Kinetic Research, a sort of free workshop that lasted little more than a year. In 1970 she returned to Paris and managed to wrap up her studies on kinetic art. ![]() Though critics either ignored her or turned her down, she continued working under the new movement’s criteria. She was mockingly referred to as a blister-making artist and several conservative headlines even read: “those infernal machines and signals…”1 Upon returning from Paris in 1962 with all those new proposals in tow, she had to cope with the rejection and incomprehension of Chile’s intelligentsia toward kinetic art. Matilde had discovered a new and right-on-track way for her work that she was not ready to give up on. Her stay in Paris, her relationship with Vasarely, Le Parc and the Groupe de Recherche D’Art Visuel (GRAV) encouraged her to pepper her works with the latest kinetic art breakthroughs of that time and create optical illusions with textures and relieves. Matilde, who was a member of the latter group, had broken away from it because, in her view, the movement had come to a formal and conceptual standstill. ![]() ![]() In the 1960s, Chile’s art was swaying between formalism –staunchly defended by the Signos group made up of Jose Balmes, Gracia Barrios, Alberto Perez and Bonati– and the abstract-concrete trend represented by the Rectangulo group, with Ramon Vergara Grez at the helm. Though legitimized and expanded throughout Europe, while acclaimed in Latin America in Venezuela and Argentina, kinetic art as a coherent movement never bloomed in Chile. She left all experiences behind and traded her concrete artistic horizon for a new visual approach that was more dynamic and ludicrous, yet far riskier: kinetic art. Only armed with this assertion and being a mature woman with a respected career in her country, he left for Paris in 1960 to unravel Europe’s new pictorial trends. But it’s not just an artistic statement it was and still is an ethic attitude and an existential will.įor Matilde, being an artist is a must, with no more justifications than the desire to grab a paintbrush and start painting. Ninety years of life and active career speak volumes of the veracity and conviction of her statement. For Matilde Perez (Chile, 1920), you get there in art only if you know how to “get” there in life.
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