Roberto Sebastian Matta was born in Santiago de Cile on the 11 november 1911. After his studies in architecture, in 1934 he moves to Paris and work with Le Corbusier and being in contact with intellectuals as Rafael Alberti and Federico García Lorca. After meeting Andrè Breton and Salvador Dalí he become part of the surrealist movement, with a way of painting inspired by psicology and oniric dimensions.

He exhibits at the Exposition internationale du surrèalisme in Paris but after the war started he migrates to New York. Here he meets Pollock, Gorkij and Rothko for whom he will become an inspiration for their future works. After moving to Rome in 1949 he becomes a connection between the abstract expressionism and the italian abscractism. In 1954 he moves to Paris. Between 1973 and 1976 he built together with Bruno Elisei, the Autoapocalipse an house made with recycled automobiles, a critic to consumism.

In 1985 the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris decicates to him a great retrospective exhibition and so will do the Museum of Modern Art of New york and later on the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the  Walker Art Center of Minneapolis. He exhibits at the San Paolo’s Biennal in 1962, in Berlin in 1970 and in Hannover in 1974. From the 90’s he lives between France and Italy. He dies in Civitavecchia in Italy on the 23 november 2002.