What defines Rossella Matamoros’ multidisciplinary approach to art?

Rossella Matamoros is one of Costa Rica’s most versatile artists, integrating drawing, painting, sculpture, and video with performance and stage design. Her practice is "syncretic," meaning she blends diverse influences—from her MFA at George Washington University to her studies of traditional performing arts in Japan. She views her abstract paintings not just as static images, but as visual records of the body's movement and ritualistic gestures.

How do social and political issues influence her work?

Matamoros uses her art as a tool for "interrogating society." She frequently addresses complex topics such as trauma, recovery, migration, and the systemic structures of the patriarchy. Her work often centers on the female experience, using "artivism" to give voice to social injustices. This commitment extends beyond the gallery through her "Trauma & Recovery" workshops for at-risk populations in Costa Rica and Spain.

What is the significance of "the line" and "the body" in her compositions?

For Matamoros, the line is a "living character" that evolves from a simple drawing into three-dimensional installations and performances. Her work is deeply physical, often featuring recurring motifs like hands, feet, and traces of movement. She seeks to reconnect modern individuals with their "primordial essence," using earth tones—blacks, whites, and siennas—to evoke a sense of ancestral memory and ritual.

What are some of the major international milestones in Matamoros’ career?

With a career spanning over 35 years and 150 exhibitions, Matamoros is a major figure in Latin American contemporary art. Notably, she represented Costa Rica at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 with her installation "My Heart of a Fortress City." She has also received the Francisco Amighetti National Prize and multiple Aquileo J. Echeverría National Awards, solidifying her status as a top-tier institutional artist.

Rossella Matamoros

Costa Rica, b.1960

Lives and works in San José

Available Sold CV

Commission

Rossella Matamoros creates abstract paintings and installations that address urgent social issues through gesture and ritual. Working primarily in mixed media, she produces bold compositions marked by decisive strokes and recurring motifs—hands, feet, traces of movement—that reference ancestral processes and bodily memory. Her approach treats paint as a visual record of the body's passage through space.

Matamoros built her practice through sustained international engagement. After studying in Paris and Washington, DC, where she worked for the Smithsonian Institution, a Japan Foundation Scholarship to Kyoto Seika University in 1999-2000 introduced her to Japanese performing arts, fundamentally altering her understanding of gesture and mark-making. This encounter with Eastern philosophies informs her work alongside Latin American primitivism, producing paintings that function simultaneously as formal experiments and political statements.

Her installations tackle teenage pregnancy, femicide, climate change and immigration through abstraction rather than illustration. “Have You Heard It? Have You Felt It?” (2019) at the Calderón Guardia Museum and “See Ourselves in the Mirror?” (2020) at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design demonstrate her commitment to social engagement.

The latter earned her Costa Rica’s Francisco Amighetti National Prize in 2020, the country’s most prestigious artistic recognition. She has also won the Costa Rican National Aquileo J. Echeverría Award twice, 1998 and 2003. Matamoros has participated at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2017, and major institutions across Latin America, Europe and Asia, participating in biennials from Tijuana to Chapingo. Her recent work includes the 2021 climate change residency “Next Season,” resulting in “THE EMBRACE,” created with Costa Rica’s Ministry of Energy. International recognition continues with her 2025 participation in “Nexos,” an Ibero-American artists exhibition in Spain.

Her four-decade career demonstrates that abstract painting can carry political weight. By referencing primitivism and performance traditions, Matamoros creates work that connects the primordial with the contemporary, proving that formal experimentation and social consciousness operate as complementary forces in Latin American contemporary art.

Why We Love This Artist

Rossella carries institutional weight — a Francisco Amighetti National Prize winner who has shown at the Venice Biennale and exhibited across Latin America, Europe and Asia. What strikes us is the confidence with which she moves between hard-hitting social subject matter and abstraction that speaks of light and optimism. She has presence, in person and on the wall.