Hilarion Manero, Ariadne at Naxos I – Landscape Ocean View, Dawn & Night, oil on wood, 2002: a woman’s head with long hair beside a rocky coastal landscape
Hilarion Manero, Atlante und Hippomenes, oil on wood, 2002: two reclining figures reaching for red apples on a dark ground
Hilarion Manero, Atropos, oil on wood, 2001: five female figures in a wide format against a blue-green background
Hilarion Manero, Engel, oil on hardboard, 2010: an angel with folded hands in a pale landscape with trees
Hilarion Manero, Girl with flowing River, oil on wood, 2002: a girl with a bird on the bank of a river
Hilarion Manero, Holding the Sky, chalk and oil on wood, 2003: two heads on a rough wooden ground, one figure holding a bird

Hilarion Manero

Instead of the usual introduction

„Thanks to the constantly effective miracle assumed by myth, the waking day of a people who are stimulated by myth, as the ancient Greeks were, does indeed resemble dream more than it does the day of a thinker whose mind has been sobered by science. If, one day, any tree may speak as a nymph, or if a god can carry off virgins in the guise of a bull, if the goddess Athene herself is suddenly seen riding on a beautiful chariot in the company of Pisistratus through the market-places of Athens - and that was what the honest Athenian believed - then anything is possible at any time, as it is in dream, and the whole of nature cavorts around men as if it were just a masquerade of the 3 gods who are merely having fun by deceiving men in every shape and form.“

(Friedrich Nietzsche – On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense, 1873)

This passage from Friedrich Nietzsche's epoch-making short essay Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne (On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense) of 1873 is intended to serve instead of the usual introduction. Manero consciously and conceptually refuses any kind of fixed definition. "Only the works shall speak for me," he says. Nietzsche here, then, as spectacles of poetic hermeneutics and as an idea from which spirit Manero's work might spring.

Hilarion Manero, Man, Woman and Bird, oil on hardboard, 2008: a man, a nude woman and a large bird in a landscape
Hilarion Manero, Diana Hunting, 2000: a nude huntress with a bow and a stag on a dark ground
Hilarion Manero, Europa, 2001: a woman in a yellow robe riding a bull through water
Hilarion Manero, Good-Luck-Bone, The Deal – Die Abmachung, 2006: painting of two faces close together on a red background
Hilarion Manero, Killing the Dragon, oil on hardboard, 2009: two figures with a lance above a dragon, a dark sun between them
Hilarion Manero, My three Daughters, 2000: three women and a man in a hat at a laid table
Hilarion Manero, The falling Apples, 2005: three figures in a dark garden with apples falling from a tree and white blossoms in the foreground
Hilarion Manero, The Night Nymph, 2003: a nude nymph with red hair in water before a green landscape
Hilarion Manero, The Fountain (unfinished), oil on canvas, 2006–2007: two women in robes in front of half-timbered houses with a fountain between them and an animal below
Hilarion Manero, Girl holding an Onion, 2002: portrait of a dark-haired young woman holding an onion in front of foliage
Hilarion Manero, Girl throwing an Onion or Galatea et Nature, 2001–2002: a young woman in a dark dress throwing an onion against a green ground
Hilarion Manero, Maria Magdalena Virgin von Zomorra – The Fool, oil on canvas, 2007: profile of a woman in a white headscarf with closed eyes
Hilarion Manero, The Cry, 1996–1997: a face with blue horns, a blue hand covering one eye
Hilarion Manero, The frequent Future: a woman in a dark dress holding up an apple, a second apple in her other hand
Hilarion Manero, Venus One – Thalassa, 2003: painting of a seated naked woman with red hair against a dark background
Hilarion Manero, Wassernymphe, 2004: a nude nymph with red hair rising from turquoise water

In 2012 Manero had the following pseudo-lexical entry on 'Psychochromaticism' written. The occasion was the exhibition of paintings created between 1998 and 2010. The title of the exhibition was: What is a psychochromatic artist?

Psychochromism (Greek ψυχή, "breath; soul; mind", & χρώμα, "colour"): aesthetic theory of the psycho-emotional effects of colour as well as the act of eliciting feelings using colour in particular with so-called "psychochromatic painting". A pioneer of psychochromatic painting, Hilarion Manero (b. 1957, Argentina) creates tense colour harmonies combining local colours and tone curving with chiaroscuro (light-dark) effects.

Whereas psychology attempts to determine the complex psycho-emotional effects and feeling- values of colour which are dependent upon individual, cultural (↑colour symbolism), and contextual factors (to date this area has been insufficiently researched). Psychochromism, on the other hand, looks at how a colour’s characteristics are expressed and the combinations and harmonies thereof. Psychochromatic theory is related to traditional aesthetics and concerns itself with the psycho- emotional effects of colour in the fine arts. Of primary interest is the individual, partly transcendental, reception of ↑colouring in the observer’s emotional awareness. Of consummate relevance would be Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) remarks in the 20th Century that colour had the power to induce an “inner resonance”. Significant too is the analogy of colours and tones as found in the theories of Aristotle (384 -322 BCE.), G. Zarlino (1570-1590) and I. Newton (1643-1727).

Hilarion Manero, The Book of Death (Nyx und Andromache), 2014: dark rock formations and a white cloth beneath a clouded sky
Hilarion Manero, The Book of Death (Pluto am Orakel der irren Träume), 2014: lumps of stone, a red cloth and a glass sphere in a dark scene with small lights
Hilarion Manero, The Book of Death (Pluto’s Traum), 2013: a darkly shrouded mountain with a small sphere in front of a sea
Hilarion Manero, The Book of Death (Chapter 5 – The whims of Uranus und der Mond Klymene), 2015: dark painting with rock shapes against a night sky
Hilarion Manero, The Book of Death (Uranus als Monster der Träume), 2014: dark rocks and branches by the sea under a pale sky
Hilarion Manero, Penthesilea, 186 × 89 cm, 1998: photo print with a torso, a metal fork and silver foil on black

Penthesilea, 186 x 89, 1998

Hilarion Manero, Orion, 86 × 89 cm, 1998: photo print with a dancing figure of paper and copper on black

Orion, 86 x 89, 1998

Psychochromatic painting, as practised by Manero, attempts to overcome the traditional dichotomy between form and colour (disegno and colore) as defined by G. Vasari (1511-1574). For Manero et al, the effects of colour can only be defined in the reciprocal interaction between the form and the sujet e.g. Sujets often connect clear colours with soft sfumato.

The playful-naïve manner in which psychochromatic painting incorporates cosmological considerations has its root in traditional colour theories where thinkers such as L.B. Alberti (1404- 1472) et. al, with a nod to the anciens, associated the primary colours (veri colori) with the four elements.

Leading representatives of psychochromatic theory, drawing inspiration from Goethe‘s (*1749- 1832) views on the subject, argue for an incessant struggle between light and darkness which is manifest in the specific characteristics of individual colours. Psychochromatic painting thus draws attention to the the antagonism between light and darkness as a metaphor for clarity and its antonym.