Mercedes Matter:A New York School Standout

It is time to perplex your mind with abstract forms and relative realities by taking a visit to Baruch’s Sidney Mishkin Gallery, where this month’s rotating exhibition presents a retrospective of the varied and fascinating career of avant garde painter Mercedes Matter. The condensed exhibition presented her work in ascending order, the left portion of the gallery hung still life paintings of nudes and landscapes,circa 1930’s, and the right portion displayed still lifes of skulls and table tops, circa 1970’s. Matter emerged from the Paris and New York art scenes dabbling in abstract expressionist art forms, working primarily with oil and charcoal. While her early work evokes the dissonant colors and wild brushstrokes of the Fauves, and the broken up, asymmetrical forms of Picasso, her later paintings exhibit the formation of her own individual style marked by the heavily shaded forms, which mold together into one whole, losing much of its’ clarity while retaining all of its visual impact. While Matter’s work proves to be both prolific and monumental as shown from the carefully selected paintings in the exhibition, her art until this day has been over shadowed by her male counterparts from the abstract era. Leaving from the gallery I felt partially revived knowing that I had obtained easy access to such obscure cultural stimulation.