Mateo Manaure

MATEO MANAURE (Uracoa, Venezuela, 1926- Caracas, Venezuela 2018).
"Polychrome columns", 1976.
Mixed media (papier-mâché and painting) on and tablex.
Presents informative labels and label of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas.
Measurements: 143 x 56 cm; 151 x 64 cm (frame).
This work exemplifies a great theoretical work, in which the artist uses color fields and parallel lines, completely reinventing the vision of the work, depending on where the viewer is located. The piece is part of the kinetic movement Op Art, or Optical Art, a pictorial movement born in the United States in 1958, as a derivation of geometric abstraction. Mainly abstract, it is based on the pictorial composition of purely optical phenomena, seeking the sensation of movement on a two-dimensional surface, deceiving the eye through complex optical illusions. Structures of repetition with a clear order are used, based on rigorous scientific principles in order to produce unprecedented visual effects.
Mateo Manaure began his connection with the art world since his childhood, so he decided in 1939 to become a professional, studying at the School of Fine and Applied Arts in Caracas until 1947. This training was complemented with his plastic experience in the studio of the painter Pedro Angel. During this period his painting reflected traditional themes in an experimental way, in which a young artist sought his own personality in his work. In 1947, after finishing his studies in Venezuela, he decided to move to what was then the European capital of art. Arriving in Paris, he decided to continue his academic training, but at the same time, the cultural activity of the city and the social and artistic effervescence of the moment led him to join the artistic group "Los Disidentes". An artistic group formed before Manaure's arrival and which experimented plastically with neo-figurative art, receiving influences from the abstract movement and other currents of contemporary art. They broke with figurative art. That is why Paris has been considered a turning point in the painting of Manaure whose incursion into abstraction will make him a master of it, evolved in the representation of that style. Later he returned to Venezuela where he decided to create the Taller Libre de Artes de Caracas, through which his painting received aesthetic and conceptual influences from surrealism, which was a movement that had had a great force in the Latin American continent, with such notable examples as Wilfredo Lam. In 1952, on his return to the country, he also decided to create the Cuatro Muros Gallery, partnering with Carlos Garcia Bogen. It was in the 60's when Manaure returned to the plastic language of abstract character through a conception of a lyrical and even narrative character that his previous compositions had not had. Today Manaure's works belong to important art collections, both private and public, such as the MoMa in New York.