Manabu Mabe was a Japanese painter, engraver, and illustrator, naturalized Brazilian. He was one of the pioneers of abstract painting in Brazil.
Background
Manabu Mabe was born in Kumamoto, Japan, on September 14, 1924, into the family of Soichi and Haru Mabe. In 1934, his father, mother, and seven brothers emigrated to Brazil to work in coffee plantations, establishing residence in the city of Lins, in the interior of São Paulo. As a child, Manabu began to paint the portrait of local landscapes.
In 1941, Manabu began researching art books and magazines. In 1945 he learned to prepare the canvas and to dilute the paints with the painter and photographer Teisuke Kumasaka. In 1947, on a trip to São Paulo, he met the painter Tomoo Handa and presented his canvases, receiving the incentive to keep nature as a source of inspiration.
Education
In 1948, Manabu Mabe studied with the painter Yoshiya Takaoka who transmitted to him technical and theoretical knowledge about painting.
Career
In 1951, at the 1st International Biennial of São Paulo, Manabu Mabe came into contact with works by the artists of the Paris School, such as Jean Claude Aujame, André Minaux, and Bernard Lorjou, an experiment that, according to him, modified his way of thinking and attitude towards painting. That same year he held his first individual in the city of Lins. Still in the 50's, he participated in the exhibitions organized by the Guanabara Group. At that time, Manabu presented on his canvases the geometric forms, approaching Cubism, and also figures contoured by thick black traces.
Gradually, Manabu adhered to abstraction. In 1955 he painted his first abstract canvas, "Vibração-Momentânea." In 1957 he moved with his family to Jabaquara, a neighborhood south of São Paulo, which, like Vila Mariana, Parraíso, and Liberdade, housed the Japanese colony in the city of São Paulo. He began to dedicate himself exclusively to painting. In 1959 he received the Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art, with the abstract paintings "Grito" and "Vitorioso", made in 1958. That same year, Manabu was honored with the article titled "The Year of Manabu Mabe" in New York.
Still in 1959, Manabu Mabe won the "Best National Painter Award" at the 5th International Biennial of São Paulo, with the works "Mobile Composition", "Piece of Light", and "White Space." In these canvases, the painter adopted a style called gestural painting, which mixes the Japanese calligraphy with chromatic spots. Mabe received the Painting Prize at the 1st Biennial of the Young People of Paris. In 1980 he was awarded the 30th Venice Biennale. In the 1980s, he painted a panel for the Pan American Union in Washington, illustrating the Hai-Kais Book, translated by Olga Salvary, and elaborating the background curtain of the Provincial Theater in Kumamoto, Japan.
Manabu Mabe became one of the most outstanding artists of informal abstract painting in Brazil. He held individual exhibitions and participates in collective exhibitions in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. His works included "Song Melancólica" (1960), "Spring" (1965), "Wind of Ecuador" (1969), "Late Autumn" (1973), and "My Dreams" (1989). Manabu Mabe died in the city of São Paulo on September 22, 1997.
Mabe is one of the great masters of painting and may have left the figurative to have no obstacles to communicate the real, and propose the reality of the fantastic.