Mateo Manaure

MATEO MANAURE (Uracoa, Venezuela, 1926 - Caracas, 2018)
Untitled, 1975
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower margin.
Measurements: 59.5 × 75 cm.

Composition of lyrical character in which Mateo Manaure develops a landscape of strong formal synthesis through a palette of soft and luminous tonalities. The scene is structured from large areas of earthy color and blurred green that suggest an open horizon and an enveloping atmosphere, where figuration is reduced to vegetal insinuations and slight vertical strokes.

The work reflects the chromatic sensitivity and atmospheric treatment characteristic of Manaure's pictorial production in the 1970s, a period in which the artist explores a more introspective and poetic painting, where the landscape becomes a space of evocation and contemplation.

Mateo Manaure was one of the most outstanding figures of Venezuelan artistic modernity. He studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas de Caracas and in 1947 he won the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas, which allowed him to travel to Paris, where he participated in the group Los Disidentes, key in the renovation of Venezuelan art.

Upon his return to Caracas, in 1952 he co-founded the Cuatro Muros Gallery, where the first exhibition of abstract art in Venezuela was held. His work occupies a prominent place in the project of integration of the arts of the University City of Caracas, directed by Raúl Villanueva and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, where he made numerous mural interventions.