Critic Perán Erminy reflects on Mateo Manaure’s Pinturas sobremontaje. After describing the Venezuelan painter’s body of work as “unclassifiable,” Erminy discusses Manaure’s unique vision in relation to his creative effort at the time of the writing. Erminy remarks on the lyrical phase of Manaure’s production, which predates his abstract-geometric work, therefore providing precedents for the feeling of the forms in these Pinturas sobremontaje. The author understands pictorial work as “image,” which he affirms, must be independently considered from modes of creating he deems “pretentious” and driven by a specific market demand. In closing, Erminy analyzes the work itself and those characteristics of it borne of the use of the imagination, characteristics whose origin lies in the inner universe.

In 1965, Venezuelan painter Mateo Manaure (b. 1926) presented the exhibition Pinturas sobremontaje (Sala Mendoza, Caracas)—a project that combined painting and photographic collages and that made use of enlargement and reprinting in different ways. In this text, critic, educator, and researcher Perán Erminy (1929–2018) assesses the painter’s project, which he considers an important moment in the artist’s production. He formulates questions about the work’s references and how they are rendered. The focal point of Erminy’s examination is what Manaure calls his “pintura sobremontaje” and how it expresses the artist’s inner world as well as the recurrence of lyrical solutions and dynamics despite open opposition to what he calls “vehement expressionisms.” Erminy praises the technique the artist uses and the small format of these pieces. The author criticizes the influence of the art market on the creative process in recent decades evident in, among other things, large-format works that seek to make instant impact and/or appeal to a decorative sensibility. This pictorial reading of Manaure’s sobremontajes upholds imagination and poetic exploration as sources of creativity especially when formulated as an alternative to commercialism.

It is for good reason that the text examines a moment in Manaure’s production when, on the one hand, he was reconnecting with Surrealism and, on the other, he was bringing his experience in graphic design to bear on his art: both are at the margins of formal language and of traditional art markets. 

Pertinent as well is a text by Alejando Otero—a member, like Manaure, of the anti-traditionalist Los Disidentes group in Paris (1950)—in which he traces the beginnings of Manaure’s career in “Mateo Manaure en la pintura: un joven pintor venezolano” [doc. no. 813639]. Critic Roberto Guevara discusses Manaure’s development as well in “Manaure: columnas en tierras movedizas” [doc. no. 1155301], and in “Manaure y la inmensa noche” [doc. no. 1156411] he reflects on the Pinturas sobremontaje.

For other texts on Mateo Manaure’s work, see by Víctor Guédez “La creación estético-visual en Mateo Manaure” [doc. no. 1155531]; by Roberto Guevara “Manaure y las Cuvisiones” [doc. no. 1156459]; by Alfredo Boulton “Mateo Manaure en el Museo de Bellas Artes” [doc. no. 1157497]; by Gastón Diehl “Mateo Manaure” [doc. no. 1156491]; the article by Teresa Alvarenga “Mi obra de hoy: Mateo Manaure llega a los 50 años” [doc. no. 1156427]; the article by Pedro Lhaya “Mateo Manaure o la autenticidad pictórica americana” [doc. no. 1156443]; and the critical text by Manaure “La escuela de artes plásticas de frente y de perfil” [doc. no. 813569] on the history of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Caracas.