Biography
Antonio Dias
Antonio Dias was born in 1944 in Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brazil, and died in 2018. He moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro in 1957, where he began working as a draughtsman and graphic designer while developing his artistic practice largely as an autodidact. He enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and frequented the studio of Oswaldo Goeldi at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes. In the mid-1960s, in the context of Brazil’s military dictatorship, Dias left Brazil for Paris after receiving a French government grant linked to his participation in the 4th Paris Biennale. After 1968, he settled in Milan, while continuing to live and work between Rio de Janeiro and Italy. Dias is considered one of Brazil’s leading contemporary artists because his work expanded the language of painting into a critical, conceptual field, combining political tension, graphic precision, language, and image.
 
Dias’s relationship with Studio Marconi was central to his European career. He presented his first exhibition there, Anywhere is my Land, in 1969, followed by further shows in 1971 and 1987, and maintained a close relationship with Giorgio Marconi and, later, with Gió Marconi and Fondazione Marconi. His early Milan works from 1968 to 1972 mark a decisive shift from the visceral, politically charged figuration of the 1960s towards a more austere and conceptual language. Using black-and-white geometric compositions, monochrome fields, diagrams, isolated words, and fragmented phrases, Dias reduced painting to its essential signs and transformed the canvas into a space of thought. His works resist fixed meaning: words do not simply explain images, and images do not illustrate words. Instead, they create a field of tension between surface, language, imagination, and absence.
 
Selected institutional exhibitions include: the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2021); Instituto de Arte Contemporânea, Brazil (2021); Fondazione Marconi, Italy (2017); Guggenheim International Exhibition, United States (1971); Biennale de Paris, France (1965).
 
Selected solo shows are: Gomide&Co, Brazil (2026); Sprovieri, United Kingdom (2025); Fondazione Marconi, Italy (2017); Studio Marconi, Italy (1995); Studio Marconi, Italy (1987); Studio Marconi, Italy (1971); Studio Marconi, Italy (1969).
Works
Exhibitions