Manabu Mabe was a Japanese-Brazilian painter. Mabe worked as a vendor of hand-painted ties in São Paulo before becoming a famous artist.
In the late 1950s, Mabe won the top award in São Paulo's Contemporary Art Salon, the top award as Brazil's best painter in the São Paulo Bienal, and the top honors for artists under 35 at Paris's first biennial.
On January 30, 1979, after an exhibition in Tokyo, 53 of his paintings were on board a Varig cargo Boeing 707-323C en route from Tokyo - Narita to Rio de Janeiro-Galeão via Los Angeles. The aircraft went missing over the Pacific Ocean some 30 minutes from Tokyo. The cause is unknown since the wreck was never found.
His works are currently displayed in the permanent exhibitions of the São Paulo Contemporary Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro, the Boston Contemporary Art Museum, the Beaux-Arts Museum of Dallas among others. The Rio de Janeiro National Museum for the Beaux-Arts lodges the most expressive paintings of a Still Nature. Other institutions that display his work are the National Art Museum of Bolivia and the V+R Sapoznik Art Collection.
Mabe died in São Paulo on September 22, 1997.