Mercedes Matter is an American female artist and influential art figure in the 1930s. She is also a mentor to generations of artists in the New York School. Her artworks balanced between the tendency of non-representative and representative art. She was studying painting, one of them from Hans Hofmann, who is one of the prominent figures of Abstract Expressionism.
Mercedes Matter dedicated her life as an art educator and artist who explores many elements in paintings, like Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism. She founded the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture in 1964. Besides her art and teaching career, she was also a writer about art and artist.
Matter emphasizes the use of perception in everyday life experience to establish a real presence. This artistic disposition reflects on her famous statement, “the knowledge an artist needs is absorbed only as it is proven in the laboratory of his experience”.
In her paintings, Matter adopted Hofmann’s “push/pull” theory with some adjusting. Hofmann asserts binary oppositions in painting, like color/shape, positive/negative, forward/reverse, light/dark. Meanwhile, Matter moves beyond these oppositions and produces a more depth effect in her abstract paintings.
Matter’s artworks range from still-lifes, figures, urban and interior scenes, to abstract paintings. She believed that artwork was only complete when it gained transcendental experience. The spiritual quality of the creative process is connected to the artist’s own perception and experience.
Here are some of Mercedes Matter’s artworks:
Mercedes Matter, “Tabletop Still Life”, 1936-1937
Courtesy of Artist and https://www.artsy.net/
Mercedes Matter, “Untitled”, 2001
Courtesy of Artist and https://www.artsy.net/
Mercedes Matter, “Untitled”, ca. 1936 -1937
Courtesy of Artist and https://www.artsy.net/