Matt Phillips (1927-2017) was born in New York City. He initially pursued a career as a poet and in 1952 he earned an M.A. in literature from the University of Chicago.  He studied art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.  Phillips traveled throughout Europe and studied painting in the museums and studios there. He taught in Paris then returned to the U.S. in 1964 to teach at Bard College in New York.  After retiring from Bard in 1987, he devoted his time to exhibitions, travel, and guest lectures.

Phillips is widely recognized as a master of the monotype and monotype/collage. Phillips’ reputation as an important 20th-century artist is based on his revival of the monotype technique in America, previously explored by 19th-century artists Degas, Gauguin, and Prendergast. Phillips merges figural and abstract traditions in his works. With their strong sense of rhythm, shape and color, his monotypes and etchings are pleasing on a purely visual level. The images of nudes and landscapes are a perfect complement to this technique because they add an even greater sense of luxuriant voluptuousness.  His work has appeared selected museum collections in Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College, Baltimore Museum of Art . the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery, New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Phillips Collection, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Whitney Museum of American of Art.