Antonio Manuel Lima Dias (February 22, 1944 – August 1, 2018), commonly known as Antonio Dias, was a Brazilian artist and graphic designer. He was a prominent figure during the concretist and

Tropicália Tropicália (), also known as Tropicalismo (), was a Brazilian artistic movement that arose in the late 1960s. It was characterized by the amalgamation of Brazilian genres—notably the union of the pop culture, popular and the avant-garde, as ...

movements.

Biography

Dias and his family moved from

Campina Grande Campina Grande is the second most populous Brazilian city in the State of Paraíba after João Pessoa, the capital. It is considered to be the most important city of the Northeastern Brazilian subregion called '' agreste''. It is considered one ...

Rio Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

in 1957. Here he began working as a graphic designer, experimenting with art in his free time. During the 1960s, Dias became a frequent visitor of the artist Oswaldo Goeldi's studio at the

Escola Nacional de Belas Artes Escola de Belas Artes (School of Fine Arts) is one of the centers of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and dates back to colonial times. A royal letter of Nov 20 1800 by John VI of Portugal established the ''Aula Prática de Desenho e Figu ...

. He first worked with abstract geometrical sculptures, but later moved to paper and canvas. After having won the 1965 Biennale des Jeunes painting award in Paris, Dias moved to Paris in 1967. When he was denied an extension of his French papers in May 1968, he moved to Milan, Italy. Several visual artists were hired as his assistants, including Marcos Chaves (1961-). He lived in Milan until his death in 2018. Even though Dias always rejected the association with the American Pop art movement, critics and curators have often drawn comparisons between his work and the movement. In 2015 he was included in

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...

's ''The World Goes Pop'' and told ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' “I always protest when I’m accused of being Pop — it’s not my party. ... Its images are like any other images.”

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dias, Antonio 1944 births 2018 deaths 20th-century Brazilian artists 20th-century Brazilian male artists