ANTONIO DIAS ARTWORKS

Antonio Manuel Lima Dias, commonly known as Antonio Dias, was a Brazilian artist and graphic designer. The artist was among the main exponents ofthe New Figuration. He was born in Campina Grande, in the state of Paraiba in 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 frequenting the artist's studio Oswaldo Goeldi.
In the mid-1960s, in open conflict with the military dictatorship established in his country, Antonio Dias went to Paris thanks to a scholarship and remained there for about two years . Subsequently, starting from 1968, he decided to move for a short time to Milan, a city where 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 to experiment with other languages, for example shooting super 8 films such as The Illustration of Art I of 1971, in which two bandages crossed the skin of a model, combining geometries, abstraction and body art.
He will undertake new journeys that will take him to Germany, where he will reside in Cologne and Berlin, in United States of America and in Nepal, where he was able to create a special handmade paper that would allow him to carry out various experiments with colours.
In recent years, some art historians have placed the first works of Antonio Dias in the context of pop art, a comparison to which the artist strongly refuses by declaring the following: "My art had nothing Pop about it. Art is a field of action that divides thoughts and forces you to take a stand. In my case it has always been an attempt at self-affirmation. For me, art in the 60s was like participating in guerrilla warfare."
Also in these years his fame increased considerably and many important museums purchased his works: among these the MOMA of New York, the Ludwig Museum of Cologne, the Tate Gallery of London, the Daros Collection of Zurich and many Latin American foundations. Antonio Dias dies in 2018 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.