Mario Abreu (August 22, 1919 - February 20, 1993) was a

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

n artist known as the "master of magic objects".

Biography

Abreu was born in 1919 in

Turmero Turmero is a city in the States of Venezuela, state of Aragua (state), Aragua in northern Venezuela. It is the capital of Santiago Mariño Municipality. The city was officially established on 27 November 1620 with the founding of a church, ''Igle ...

, Venezuela. Competent in

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

since childhood, Abreu made his first drawings aged 9 and 10, when he painted his first

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

, and moved to

Caracas Caracas ( , ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern p ...

at a young age. He worked as a

laborer A laborer ( or labourer) is a person who works in manual labor typed within the construction industry. There is a generic factory laborer which is defined separately as a factory worker. Laborers are in a working class of wage-earners in whic ...

in Casa Benzo while studying at night to finish his

primary education Primary education is the first stage of Education, formal education, coming after preschool/kindergarten and before secondary education. Primary education takes place in ''primary schools'', ''elementary schools'', or first schools and middle s ...

. Later he attended night school from 9 to 11 pm at the Caracas School of Fine and Applied Arts, directed by Antonio Monsantos. In 1942, after winning a painting competition and winning a

scholarship A scholarship is a form of Student financial aid, financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, Multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion, athleti ...

worth 100 bolivars per month, he was able to leave work and attend the day courses at the same school, from which he graduated in 1947. He participated in the Free Art Workshop, founded the year after his graduation. In 1951, Mario Abreu received the National Prize for Painting at the XII Annual Official Hall Venezuelan Art, allowing him to get a scholarship to continue studies in Europe. Between 1952 and 1961 he lived in Paris, where he developed an intense intellectual life and began a new phase of his work. He returned to Caracas in 1961. In 1967 he exhibited in the São Paulo Biennale. In 1975 he received the

National Prize of Plastic Arts of Venezuela National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

and in 1985, Armando Reveron Award, granted by the Venezuelan Association of Artists. In 1983, he represented Venezuela at the São Paulo Biennial, and in 1993 he was Venezuela's representative for the

Venice Biennial The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

. After his death, the Museum of Visual Arts in

Maracay Maracay () is a city in north-central Venezuela, near the Caribbean coast, and is the capital and most important city of the state of Aragua. Most of it falls under the jurisdiction of Girardot Municipality. The population of Maracay and its ...

was renamed the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Maracay Mario Abreu (MACMA).

References

Venezuelan painters 1919 births 1993 deaths Venezuelan contemporary artists Contemporary painters {{Venezuela-painter-stub