[open the box] António Sena

Starting with his earliest drawings back in the sixties, when he went to London, his work has focussed on calligraphy and inscription in order to produce beautiful weavings in which drawing, the stain from painting and the mark of writing come together in an indiscernible manner, violating the codes of these disciplines.

Sometimes, particularly in the eighties, the lines became organized almost into constructions, creating meshes that seemed to come from the overlaying of structures, as when one overlays acetates that produce transparencies which at the same time hide things. It is a course of progressive obnubilation, of a saturation of erasing. In these latter works, which include this one here, the painting is complex and contradictory, because the process of its construction is turned into its stigma, as the drawing stands out over any defining of the pictorial field, and the gesture is just a tool for erasing.

Biography
António Sena was born in Lisbon, in 1941. Between 1965 and 1975 he lived in London, where he worked with the Lisson Gallery, studied at the St. Martin’s School of Art and participated in a burgeoning art scene. Back in Portugal he worked as a teacher and continued his artistic activity, although a large part of his work was kept “hidden away” in his studio. He held a solo exhibition in 2002 at the Centro de Arte Moderna – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon). His work was shown in an anthological exhibition held in 2003 at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves (Oporto).

Bibliography
António Sena, pintura (cat.), Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2003.
António Sena, pintura e desenho (cat.), Porto, Fundação de Serralves, 2003.