The eye-opening mini-retrospective now on view at Berry Campbell seeks to reclaim Matter’s position as a lodestar in the constellation of twentieth-century American art. Beginning with a small selection of early 1930s charcoals from her student years with Hofmann, where her aforementioned fidelity to drawing is already evident, the exhibition spans nearly six decades of her career, allowing the viewer to appreciate her precocious growth as an artist and follow that line through her mature output. Among her peers, Matter developed a singular practice that hovered fruitfully between abstraction and figuration. A youthful, untitled self-portrait from around 1935 even then displays her concerns—a regal Mercedes with an imperious stare and chin held high looks down upon her audience as her face fragments into geometric slivers of black and white, blue, and red.
— Jessica Holmes, The Brooklyn Rail
