Rebeca Matte Bello


Rebeca Matte Bello was a Chilean sculptor. Her sculptures are in the collection of the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts, including her sculpture Icarus and Daedalus, which resides outside the museum.

Early life and education

Rebeca Matte, born October 29, 1875 in Santiago, Chile, was the only daughter of Rebecca Reyes and Augusto Matte, an ambassador for Chile. While living in Santiago, she was educated by her grandmother. Matte was exposed to many intellectuals of Chile at the time, including José Victorino Lastarria, Gabriel Jordan Amunátegui, and Alberto Blest Gana. Her father would move to Paris and Matte would be educated in Europe.
In Europe, she first studied in Rome, under Giulio Monteverde. In Paris, she studied at the Académie Julian under Paul Dubois and Denys Puech. As a young artist, she found influence in the work of Auguste Rodin. She would marry diplomat Pedro Felipe Larrain Iñíguez, and she would give birth to their daughter, Lily Iñíguez Matte. Lily would die in 1926, this grief causing Matte not to sculpt anymore.

Career

In 1899, she displayed a statue entitled "Horace" at the Salon in Paris, a work showing the physical and psychological rigidity associated with an epileptic seizure. In 1908, the Chilean government commissioned her to design a sculpture for the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Bello displayed two works at the 1913 Salon d'Automne. The first, "full of allure and vigor", is a bust of an older wrestler shown "defying the harshness of life". The second work, which was said to be one of the nicer works in the Salon, was called "A Life"; it was a representation of a beautiful, mature woman sitting on a stone sphinx, looking backwards. Le Figaro describes the artist as a fine talent from the young Latin American school of art and noted her ease and control over the execution of these works. It notes that she studied under Denys Puech and a Monsieur Dubois.
The piece commissioned for the International Court of Justice was installed in 1914; it was called The War.
The Chilean government continued to commission works from Matte and in 1914 she created Heroes of Concepción, located in Santiago. Matte became a teacher at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze in 1918.

Later life and death

Matte's daughter, Lily, would be diagnosed with tuberculosis and would die in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps in 1926. Matte would become depressed over Lily's death, and would cease creating art, focusing on charity work on behalf of her daughter. Matte died, in Paris, on May 14, 1929.
In 1929, after her death, her husband donated Icarus and Daedalus to the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts. The piece, a copy of the original which was commissioned by the government of Chile as a gift to the country of Brazil and is on public display in Rio de Janeiro, was placed outside of the museum in 1930. An award, named after Matte, was created in 1922 by the Chilean Ministry of Education for notable Chilean sculptors.

Notable works