Untitled

Venezuela embraced abstraction in the 1950s, led by artists like Manaure who worked and traveled between Europe and the Americas. Spearheading modernism in Caracas, he co-founded the gallery Cuatro Muros in 1952, making abstract—and suggestively universal—art accessible to everyone. As a member of Los Disidentes, an expatriate group of Venezuelan artists in Paris, he advocated for a transformation of the country’s art, moving past the anachronism of landscape painting. In his own practice, Manaure experimented with geometric abstraction, creating unified, organized environments that transcended the conflicted reality and political upheaval of his country. In this work, a vertical rectangular form built out of stacked “stripes” and made in a repeated blue-grey palette establishes a dynamic rhythmic pattern. The angular curves and edges of the black line work create a simple optical illusion, suggesting the presence of three-dimensional space.

Text credit: Produced in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology.