Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) is one of the most influential artists of the 1970s, whose work has continued to be a noted influence of both architects and visual artists since. Along with his major building cuts from 1973 to 1978, in which laboriously cut holes into floors of abandoned or disused buildings, including A W-Hole House, Conical Intersect, Day’s End, and Splitting (1974), Matta-Clark extensively explored his interest in metabolic and cooking processes, including his restaurant Food (1971); his play with language and the syntax of voids, gaps, and abandoned spaces;  and the use of drawing as a mode of thinking through space. His work is widely regarded for its social and creative aspects surrounding the conception of architecture, or as he put it, “making space without building it”.

Gordon Matta-Clark was a key figure in the New York art world in SoHo from the late 1960s until his untimely death in 1978, and now recognized as of the most influential artists of the last decades. He was born in New York on June 22, 1943, to artists Roberto Matta and Anna Clark. Matta-Clark’s childhood was spent in New York, Paris, and Chile, and he studied architecture at Cornell University in 1963–68.