Gustavo Manrique interviewed the Venezuelan artist Mario Abreu (1919–1993) for Abreu’s first exhibition featuring his series “objetos mágicos” [Magical Objects] at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1965. The journalist’s interview, although brief, offers proof of the folk roots of Abreu’s work, with regard to the spiritual as well as the aesthetic and emotional, especially in reference to his objetos mágicos, the title of the show in question, a group of the artist’s work that is most celebrated by critics. The language that distinguishes him—replete with metaphors and moments of incoherence—Abreu affirms his commitment to an art that expresses his own origins: Santeria, witchcraft, and magic, all of which (according to other testimony by the [artist]) are linked to his infancy. He also states that his origins connect him to the rest of the American continent: “Descendemos, amigo periodista, de un gran brujo llamado América.” [We descend, my journalist friend, from a great witch called America.] The artist’s description of his objetos mágicos expresses their unifying quality, in terms of form and spirituality.
For a review of the artist by Manuel Trujillo, see the ICAA digital archive: “Abreu, pintor desorientado” [Abreu, A Disoriented Painter] (doc. no. 850789); also see the interview by Miyó Vestrini, “No busco lo mágico como abstracción sino como razón existencial del hombre”, [I Do Not Seek the Magical as an Abstraction but Instead as the Existential Reason for Man] (doc. no. 1172444)].
