Helios Ludens Caelo
Roberto Matta

Helios Ludens Caelo by Roberto Matta is a large-format oil on canvas from 1982.
Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity issued by Matta Archives.

Featured in the catalogue of the exhibition dedicated to Matta at Galerie Mitterrand in Paris in 2024, with the following text by Fabrice Flahutez:

“A large-format painting from Matta’s Italian years, Helios Ludens Caelo was inspired in the first place by the Etruscan high-relief terracotta work, The Winged Horses of Tarquinia, preservede a few kilometers from La Bandita, his home in the Latium region of central Italy. The originality of Matta’s composition is that the archeological object is placed in a pictorial narrative based on the artist’s reading of John Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Vulture. Homo Ludens demonstrates that all confrontations are governed by rules, even combat falls within the nature of play, whether it be archaic, ceremonial, or simulated. Bloodshed does not run counter to this idea as long as it is framed by play. Involved in a chromatic battle, the horses here have no awareness of what it is at stake in war, or the rules established by the belligerent humans who are leading them to death. So here Matta is developing the idea that world consciousness must be raised in order to achieve an “inner guerrilla”. In this view the only hope was that every individual could try to ward off the forces hostile to any emancipation and not become the war horses in a fight where there is nothing to be gained.”