“Galaxies”

Antonio Dias began his career in the 1960s and stood out in Brazil and abroad as an avant-garde artist who worked with a variety of techniques. The artist won grants and awards from important institutions and lived in several countries. Having participated in four editions of the São Paulo Biennial (16th, 22nd, 24th and 29th), his work was also present at the 1st Mercosul Biennial, 12th Turkey Biennial, 39th Venice Biennial and the 8th Paris Biennial, where he won the painting prize. His works are part of private collections around the world and public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art – MoMA (USA), Daros Foundation (Germany), Itaú Cultural, MAC – Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo and MAM – Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, among others.

In the 1950s, Dias moved from Paraíba to Rio de Janeiro. This was when he developed his first works under the guidance of Oswaldo Goeldi. Antonio Dias was actively involved in the avant-garde movements of the 1960s and 70s, and participated in exhibitions such as "Opinião 65" and "Nova objetividade brasileira"; he signed the "Declaration of the Basic Principles of the Avant-Garde", alongside other artists such as Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Pape, defending freedom of creation and the use of a new language, at a time of political tension in Brazil.

In 1966, he began the series "The Illustration of Art", a work that marked his career and positioned Dias as an artist who combined concrete poetry and the neoconcretism of his ancestors with a very particular conceptual research. In the 1970s, in addition to winning the Guggenheim Fellowship, the artist traveled to Nepal, where he learned techniques for producing handmade paper that he incorporated into his work. At the same time, he used a variety of media to develop his works: Dias's works in video, photography, sculpture, engraving, audio art, installation and objects have the same poetic force as his paintings, which were always present and of crucial importance throughout his career. Paulo Sergio Duarte, in a text from 2004, states that "without ever giving up reflective investigation, evident even when people attributed the quality of 'visceral' to his work in the 1960s, he is not afraid of scale and problematic articulations".