Francisco Matto
b. 1911, Montevideo, Uruguay - d. 1995, Montevideo, Uruguay
At the age of twenty-one, Matto traveled to Tierra del Fuego and acquired the first Pre-Columbian pieces of what was to become a major collection and an important influence on his art. In 1962, Matto opened his Museum of Pre-Columbian Art housed ceramics, textiles, and sculpture from Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.
In 1969, Matto won the first prize for the silver coin he designed for the Central Bank of Uruguay, awarded by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Geldgeschichte, an international numismatic association based in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1982, he was invited to participate in the First International Meeting for Open Air Sculpture in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
Art, for Matto, was a means of communicating with the divine, and the elemental forms of his sculptures became vehicles to facilitate the quasi-religious function of his art. In his Totem Series, Matto sought to develop the animistic principle through the liberation of the sign.
Please click for Chronology and CV
Francisco Matto
El misterio de la forma
Gallery exhibition catalogue with essay by Alicia Haber, Illustrated chronology by Cecilia de Torres, 75 color plates, Spanish with English text, 206 pages
Published by Galería Oscar Prato, Montevideo
$ 50.00 + postage
Francisco Matto
Poesias y Pinturas 1935-1945
A study of Matto’s Matisse inspired paintings of the 1930s & 40s, before he joined the Taller Torres-García; and the relationship between the artist’s poetry and his painting
Essays by Lilian Uribe and Cecilia de Torres; In Spanish and English; 30 color and 40 black and white reproductions, 102 pages, 10¼ x 8½ in.
Published by Galería Oscar Prato, Montevideo & Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York
$ 30.00 + postage
Cecilia de Torres, El Norte es el Sur, Revista Paula, Diario El Pais. Uruguay, 2021.
Robert C. Morgan Review - Courtesy of Review Magazine (February 1, 2000)
Taller Torres-García permanent exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
We are pleased to share the following article written by Cecilia de Torres:
El Norte es el Sur, Revista Paula, Diario El País, Uruguay, 2021.
You can read or download the article here.
Francisco Matto, Another Way of Seeing
2016 Winter-Spring
The South was Their North: Artists of the Torres-García Workshop
2015-2016 Autumn-Winter
Art Basel Miami Beach 2014
December 4-7, 2014
Line - Plane - Volume / Sculpture: 1944-2006
2006 Winter
Works ON & OF Paper - Modern and Contemporary
2005 Autumn
Modernism: Montevideo & Buenos Aires 1930-1960
2001 - 2002 Winter
Francisco Matto - Portraits, Totems and Graphisms
1999 Autumn