A portrait of love's labor.

• Author: Windhausen, Rodolfo A.
• Position: Lillian Lorca's preservation of Roberto Matta's works

WHEN AN EXHIBITION of Roberto Matta Echaurren's work opened at the Parkerson Gallery in Houston, Texas, in early 1991, few people knew that the drawings, paintings, photographs and letters of the celebrated Chilean artist harked back to a distant youthful romance. And that the whole show was largely due to zealous custody of those precious keepsakes maintained over the years by the girlfriend in question, Lilian Lorca de Tagle. More important, however, is that those youthful creations show Matta to have been a painter of great talent even before he left Chile for Europe and fame in the 1930s.

Lillian Lorca, a former official of the United States government now retired in Austin, was the muse to whom Matta dedicated these works when the two were living a youthful idyll in Santiago six decades ago. Years later, Matta confessed to the Chilean philosopher Roberto Carrasco Pirard, that his involvement with Lillian "was much more serious than an infatuation." The saving of early works of one of the greatest surrealist painters of our time has all the hallmarks of a great love story, but it is also rooted in the passion which both Matta and Lillian felt for art.

"We met the way people meet in South America. We moved in the same circles. I had just returned from Europe and he had completed his training as an architect at Santiago's Catholic University," reminisced Lillian, an elegant septuagenarian who has not lost her Chilean accent despite the more than forty years she has lived outside her country. "In talking with him I realized he was much more interesting than all the other young men I had known." Matta, in turn, has said that Lillian "was much more cultured and closer to what I was deep down," going on to describe everyone he had met before her as "completely illiterate."

Enthusiastically interested in art, Lillian had what she calls "a little more to talk about" than most girls of her era, and she soon felt attracted by Matta's fascinating personality. But she quickly learned that an old family feud stood in the way of any close friendship with the artist. Nevertheless the idyll continued in secret ("Some girlfriends helped us to meet.") and blossomed thanks to their shared interest in the arts.

Lillian, who was also studying art, encouraged Matta to perfect his painting and drawing skills. Meanwhile, the artist was trying to establish himself as an interior decorator, a line of work for which he did not appear to have much aptitude...