Antonio Dias biography

Antonio Manuel Lima Dias, commonly known as Antonio Dias, was a Brazilian artist and graphic designer. The artist was among the main exponents of New Figuration. He was born in Campina Grande, in the state of Paraiba, Brazil, in 1944. In 1957 he moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro where he enrolled at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts and began attending the studio of the artist Oswaldo Goeldi.
In the mid-1960s, in open contrast to the military dictatorship established in his country, Antonio Dias went to Paris thanks to a scholarship and stayed there for about two years. Subsequently, starting in 1968, he decided to move briefly to Milan, a city he would often return to visit. In Milan, he formed strong friendships with artists such as Mario Schifano, Luciano Fabro, Alighieri Boetti and Giulio Paolini and began experimenting with other languages, for example shooting super 8 films like The Illustration of Art I from 1971, in which two bandages crossed the skin of a model, combining geometry, abstraction, and body art.
He will undertake new travels that will take him to Germany, where he will reside in Cologne and Berlin, to the United States of America, and to Nepal, where he has the opportunity to create a special handmade paper that will allow him to carry out various experiments with colors.
In recent years, some art historians place Antonio Dias's early works within the realm of pop art, a comparison to which the artist strongly objects, declaring the following: "My art had nothing to do with Pop. Art is a field of action that divides thoughts and forces you to take a position. In my case, it has always been an attempt at self-affirmation. For me, art in the 1960s was like participating in guerrilla warfare."
Over these years his fame greatly increases and many important museums acquire his works: among them the MOMA of New York, the Ludwig Museum of Cologne, the Tate Gallery of London, the Daros Collection of Zurich and many foundations in Latin America. Antonio Dias died in 2018 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.