Born in Santiago, Chile, Roberto Matta moved to Europe in 1933, where he initially studied architecture with the pioneering Modernist known as Le Corbusier. Later, Matta took up painting and, through his friendship with Andre Breton, he joined the Parisian Surrealist group, which advocated channeling the unconscious to reveal forms and images. To escape war in Europe, Matta emigrated from Paris to New York in 1939; along with other European artists in exile, he became acquainted with New York-based painters including contemporaries Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and others. Matta’s spontaneous drawing and interest in mysticism influenced the evolution of Abstract Expressionism.

In Le Même Si, Matta’s angular draftsmanship and use of dreamlike forms create an atmosphere of both growth and destruction within an imaginary landscape. The acid colors of his palette in this painting convey a highly charged emotional state, supporting what Matta asserted as the purpose of his paintings: to depict the human condition. In an essay on Matta, Mexican poet Octavio Paz described his painting as “an architecture of time: an edifice of lines, forms, and colors in motion—space beginning to walk.”