On November 3rd, I attended the Mercedes Matter exhibit at the Mishkin Gallery. The exhibit contained many paintings by the late artist Mercedes Matter, which were sectioned off in different areas, in accordance with the time they were painted. In the first section there were paintings that were painted while Ms. Matter was in her early years. All the paintings were abstract and it just gave the general sense of the form that was portrayed. For example, in one of the paintings a woman was portrayed nude. We could discern that it was a woman from the general shape of her form; there weren’t many details and she was highly abstracted, as she was painted in bright colors, like blue, green and red. As we looked through the rest of the exhibition we saw that Ms. Matter started painting even more abstracted works of art as her life progressed. Her later works of art were so abstracted it was hard to see what was actually being portrayed.
The group at the exhibition was a small group, so it made the presentation easier to hear and understand. The presenter of the exhibition informed us that Ms. Matter was born in 1913 and she passed away in 2001. She also informed us that a knowledge in art could help even business majors. When we start working in big companies, she explained, that we will be put in social situations in which it will be useful to have cultural knowledge. The exhibit was interesting and it gave me the chance to learn about an artist who I had not known about before.