In 1951, the author Manuel Trujillo made harsh comments about the individual exhibition that Mario Abreu presented at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, shortly before his leaving for Paris. Trujillo’s criticism centers on the themes and pictorial technique of his work, describing him as slow to respond to developments in landscape, and alluding to Monet’s style. He brands the pictorial technique as that of a “schoolboy.” The present article should be seen as part of the criticism that occurred between abstract and representational artists that gathered texts that favored abstraction, describing everything else as backward, antiquated, and against the developments coming from Paris. After this exhibition, in the same year, Abreu received second place in the Premio Oficial de Pintura for his work El Gallo, and the Federico Brandt prize in the XXI Salón Oficial. He likewise was awarded the Premio Andrés Pérez Mujica in the IX Salón Arturo Michelena and third prize for painting in the IV Salón Planchart, again for El Gallo. Among those comments in favor of Abreu’s exhibition, there is the essay written by Ida Gramcko “Exposición de Abreu,” published in the same newspaper, El Nacional (September 1951). Mario Abreu was a representative of the aesthetic ideas that incorporated the indigenous past as well as references to popular culture.
For two interviews with the painter, see the one conducted by journalist Gustavo Manrique for the exhibition Objetos Mágicos (1965), titled “Yo, Mario Abreu, digo que sólo lo americano nos salvará “(doc. no. 1102189); and the one by Miyó Vestrini “No busco lo mágico como abstracción, sino como razón existencial del hombre” (doc. no. 1172444).