Throughout a prolific career that spanned more than five decades, Antonio Dias created an artistic practice marked by radicalism, experimentalism and a keen perception of the artistic dilemmas of his time. He emerged in the Rio de Janeiro art scene in the 1960s, amidst the generation of artists linked to the Nova Objetividade Brasileira [New Brazilian Objectivity], which sought to overcome traditional art supports, and promoted artistic freedom and a critical analysis of reality. His work explores and often combines different media, such as drawing, painting, installation and object.  

Dias learned to read through contact with comic books, attended woodcut workshops with Oswaldo Goeldi, worked as a draughtsman for the Ministry of Health and was an illustrator for Senhor magazine. His education took place in the midst of various political and social upheavals, such as the emergence of a repressive regime, the modernization of Rio de Janeiro and the confluence of heterogeneous cultural matrices in art. Dias and many artists of his generation worked with images from popular culture, television, newspapers and advertising, a fact that led some art critics to associate his production with the international currents of Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme, which are in fact insufficient to explain the complexity of his language.  

In 1965, Dias moved to Paris after receiving a scholarship from the French government for his participation in the 4th Biennale de Paris. The artist lived most of his life in Milan, also visiting New York in 1972, when he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Another outstanding phase in his career is the body of work he did during a trip to Nepal, where he researched local papermaking techniques, an experience that resulted in a famous set of woodcut prints. He returned to Rio de Janeiro in 2010 and continued with his painting practice, characterized, in this late phase, by the support formed by planes of different sizes and colors, abandonment of figuration and greater attention to textures and chromatic combinations. 

In his extensive career, he has received several awards and scholarships and has taught at various institutions in Europe. He took part in the 39th Venice Biennale (1980), several editions of the Biennale de Paris and the Bienal de São Paulo, which in its 34th edition (2021) featured an impressive set of his paintings from the 1970s. He has held solo exhibitions since 1962 and has had an intense international institutional presence throughout his career. His work is part of prestigious collections such as: MoMA, USA; Daros Latinamerica Collection, Switzerland; Museum Ludwig, Germany; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Argentina; MAM São Paulo, Brazil, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP – MAC USP, Brazil; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil; Itaú Cultural, Brazil; among others.