La Bandita by Roberto Sebastián Matta
A stone’s throw from the sea, surrounded by woods, orchards and olive groves, the Bandita retreat, now home to the Matta Archives, is a dreamy oasis of beauty and fantasy.
Originally the Convent of the Passionist Fathers, founded by Saint Paul of the Cross in 1750, it was purchased by the Chilean artist Roberto Sebastián Matta in 1968. Thanks to a laborious and careful restoration the original essence of the place has been preserved even though the artist’s soul, imagination and sensitivity can be felt within the walls.
In this corner of paradise, almost estranged from the world and yet so full of life, several of the artist’s works are preserved. Matta’s extraordinary collection of primitive art, the rooms devoted to his work and the chapel where he, from the 1970s onwards, painted and moulded many of his creations and in whose crypt he now rests with his wife Germana Ferrari, can be found here. The quintessence of his unconditional freedom and total openness towards existence, as well as all religions, cultures and traditions is on display here.
Matta was interested in everything that is human and this is revealed in every detail of his art, from the ceramic nativity scene, in which the characters, including angels and magi, wear masks as if they formed part of an amusing role-play; to the crucifix in which body and cross merge into one. It can be seen further in the monumental painting of Pentecost, with its multiplication of hands and hearts and in the design chairs made from discarded materials, which open up like flower petals and turn into thrones.
With ceramics, Matta moulds shapes and figures that seem to spring from the unexpected meeting of two very ancient civilisations: the pre-Columbian Mapuche, which has Chilean roots, and the Mediterranean, Etruscan and Latin civilisations, dominant in the land of Etruria to the north of the Tiber and, therefore, in Tarquinia.
“I believe pottery was the literacy, the reading of the American Indian peoples. For the Inca people, pottery was about being coherent, grasping what was around, having a geography, a picture of the world.”
“Ceramics is like a curious mirror, a kind of self-portrait to see where your hands are because when your hands get tired, everything becomes a credit card. Art is by definition the reaction to nothing, the poiesis.”
La Bandita is a private home and, as such, is not open to the public.
For information:
Tel. +39 0766 855955
