Untitled (number 11) reveals Hans Hofmann’s influence on Matter’s early work. Painted in 1933, the first year that Matter began taking Hofmann’s evening painting course at the Art Students League, this work exhibits the principles of Hofmann’s “push/pull” theory, a method of combining opposing forces in color and shape in order to create the illusion of space, depth and movement on a two-dimensional plane. Matter uses earthy tones of red, green, yellow, purple and white, some more vivid or more muted than others, in the rectangle and square shapes that fill this paper that has been laid down on canvas. While these shapes exhibit a quadrilateral form, a closer look can tell that some are rigid and geometric, while others are more biomorphic in form. Playing with complimentary colors with a range of values, Matter layers one shape on top of another to make some appear closer, and others farther away, some even extending off the canvas. She continues to enhance this effect through shading, as well as a calculated, though seemingly ununiformed, spacing between the shapes. Each mark is deliberate so as to not break the illusion of three-dimensionality.