Center for the Arts at Pepperdine University

Open Tuesday - Sunday, 11 AM to 5 PM, and one hour prior to most performances through intermission.

Mercedes Matter:

A Retrospective Exhibition

January 23-April 4, 2010

Mercedes Matter (1913-2001) played an important role in the mid-century modern movement. Daughter of Philadelphia modernist Arthur B. Carles, she studied with Hans Hofmann in the 1930s and was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group. During WWII she and her husband, photographer Herbert Matter, lived in Santa Monica and were close to famed designers Charles and Ray Eames. In the 1950s she became part of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Her friendships with painters such as Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston helped shape her own signature style, based on a bold, visceral response to objects in nature. This exhibition, the first major retrospective of Mercedes Matter's art, was curated by Ellen Landau, professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University. It is accompanied by a book with essays by Landau, Weisman Museum director Michael Zakian, and two other art historians.