Establishing congruences between Modernist abstraction and the Pre-Columbian traditions of the ancient Americas, Uruguayan artist Francisco Matto (1911-1995) was a pioneer of Latin American art, and one of the most significant students of El Taller Torres-García, the workshop school established by Joaquín Torres-García. Matto remained in his native Montevideo, Uruguay for all of his life, and was financially secure enough to not need to sell or promote his work; consequently, it rarely circulates in international exhibitions, instead remaining in the estate of the artist and a few private collections in Montevideo, New York, Houston and Belgium.
The Modern and the Mythic
is the first comprehensive U.S. publication on Matto, and presents more than five decades of artistic production, from the artist's early work under Torres-García to his late works of the 1990s.