I was drawn to this work because, at first glance, I couldn't quite locate the reclining figure suggested by the painting's title. Only after gazing at it from a distance, taking in our latest exhibition, Making Space, did the figure begin to appear. Sun-soaked limbs emerged from the canvas, carving out space for themselves amid the clutter and noise of Matter's colorful brushwork. The painting revealed itself slowly, almost on its own terms.
That sense of hesitation feels inextricable from Matter's artistic practice. Though deeply embedded within one of the most influential artistic circles of the twentieth century, she resisted the kind of visibility that defined many of her peers, and was best known later in life for her presence and role at the New York Studio School. Her circle in New York included figures such as Alexander Calder, Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, and Elaine and Willem de Kooning. Notably, she was one of the few women associated with The Club, the predominantly male downtown gathering of Abstract Expressionist artists, and a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936, at a moment when abstraction was still widely dismissed in the United States.
Born to the modernist painter Arthur B. Carles, who was integral in bringing cutting-edge European artistic developments to the United States, and model Mercedes de Córdoba, Matter was raised in a richly artistic world. Her parents' close ties to figures such as Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz placed her within the currents of modernist discourse from an early age.
Matter's relative lack of visibility was, in part, the result of self-censorship. According to Ellen Landau in her incisive 2009 monograph on the artist, Matter declined repeated invitations from gallerists Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis to exhibit her work. She was unwilling to present work she felt was unresolved, holding herself to exacting standards. There may also have been a fear of showing too soon, as Willem de Kooning had warned her, the risk that premature exposure could result in dismissal.
Despite her self-critical stance, Matter's genius was evident from a young age. She began making art at just six years old and would go on to study under Maurice Sterne, Alexander Archipenko, and significantly, Hans Hofmann at the Art Students League. Hofmann would prove to be a defining influence for her career and thinking. Through him, she became involved with the Works Progress Administration, working as the only woman artist on Fernand Léger's mural project for the French Line passenger ship company. During this period, she also formed a close friendship with Lee Krasner after both were arrested for participating in a 1936 WPA protest against the dismissal of artists and models from the program.
What compels me most about Matter is not simply her proximity to these figures, but the way her work pulls together her influences, past and present. Undercurrents of Cézanne's structured forms and Picasso's fractured space merge with the gestural intensity of Abstract Expressionism. In Untitled (Reclining Nude), as well as Untitled (Still Life) (c. 1985-90), forms hover between recognition and dissolution, built through color rather than line, and sensation rather than description. Yet, Matter's unique style is unmistakable. In Untitled (Reclining Nude), agitated lines and rugged brushwork push against the negative space of the canvas in vivid color. The figure's red lips and dark hair lie camouflaged within a sea of hashed strokes. Her gaze seems to extend in front of her, while her left arm drifts lazily across and down the right side of the painting. A feeling of interior warmth radiates from the figure. Color energizes the composition in tension with her languor: slashes of lime green vibrate against warm purples, while pinks, blues, and reds gather below, creating an imagined plane beneath her.
Matter articulated her artistic pursuit with striking clarity. Her paintings, she wrote, were driven by two impulses: "intense color sensations" and "the seductive geometry of certain intricacies of forms." Her aim was to convey "light emanating from the interactions of colors, not depicted," and to arrive at a coherence that transcended "its ingredients to become simultaneously present… on that merciless plane of the surface." Her commitment to process shaped the conditions of her practice. Matter would spend months, even years, on a single canvas, continually reworking and refining it. While she briefly explored figuration through abstraction, creating works like Reclining Nude, her extended method made sustained engagement with live models difficult. Still life, instead, offered a stable subject that could withstand prolonged observation and transformation. In Untitled (Still Life), jagged strokes of purple cut through the surrounding space, suggestive of a white sheet acting as a backdrop for an arrangement of objects. Rounded and angular shapes in shades of green, red, yellow, blue, and orange cohere, abstracting their forms until they are unrecognizable.
Matter's approach to her practice extended naturally into her teaching. After years of instructing at institutions including Pratt Institute and the Philadelphia College of Art, Matter published her 1963 manifesto in ARTnews, "What's Wrong with U.S. Art Schools?" in which she critiqued the lack of rigor in contemporary art education. The essay directly led to the founding of the New York Studio School in 1964, after a group of her Pratt students encouraged her to establish a school grounded in her vision. There, alongside artists such as Philip Guston and art historian Meyer Schapiro, Matter emphasized drawing from life, discipline, and the slow development of "seeing".
Understanding an artist's process feels, for me, like unlocking a code. Still Life and Reclining Nude are the kinds of paintings I want to live with, where color, movement, and form unveil glimpses of their subjects as the viewer's capacity for "seeing" develops slowly. These works ask for time, attention, and a willingness to sit with them.