Mateo Manaure: Master of color who gave life to Caracas with his art (+Christmas)

On October 18, 1926, the master of modern art Mateo Manaure, a Venezuelan considered the master of abstractionism, was born in Uracoa, Monagas, who stood out for his murals full of color and beauty.

From 1941 to 1946 he studied at the School of Plastic Arts and Applied Arts, now the Cristóbal Rojas School of Visual Arts, where he studied graphic arts in the workshop of Pedro Ángel González, to whom he was an assistant. Already in 1947, he won the first edition of the National Plastic Arts Award.

Back in Caracas, together with Carlos González Bogen, he founded the Cuatro Muros Gallery in 1952 and they held the first Abstract Art Exhibition in the country. Later

He began his collaboration with Carlos Raúl Villanueva's University City project, where, in addition to contributing 26 of his own works, he emerges as a supervisor of works of art.

Manaure's work has gone through different stages. The first, with a representative tendency with classic themes such as the nude, landscape and still life, with a gestural character. Later, when he went to Paris, France, his work evolves towards geometric abstraction and then becomes lyrical abstraction. In this way, he worked alternately on representation and abstraction.

Among his works is the Uracoa Mural, on Libertador Avenue in Caracas, which today, in addition to its beauty, is the largest vitreous mural in the world.

98 years after his birth, Venezuelans honor the memory of this illustrious artist who left behind as a midwife and forger of Caracas that rose between modernism and art.

Mazo News Team