Martinho Dias’s conceptual paintings create new narratives, removing several of today’s leading public figures from their comfortable seats.
Martinho Dias is a Portuguese-born conceptual painter. He got his formal artistic education at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto, earning his master’s degree. Martinho was an illustrator in a local newspaper and teacher of Visual Arts until 2009. Since then, he has dedicated himself entirely to artistic activity. His work has been showcased in many individual and collective exhibitions, both in Portugal and abroad.
Over the years, Martinho focused on playing with society’s different power plays and privileged social layers. Mixed with a generous amount of irony and humor, his conceptual paintings circle many paradoxes.
Conceptual Paintings That Birth New Meanings
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200 x 260 cm (diptych)
acrylic on canvas
2019
An important meeting starring a vegetable.
Inventing potential
Martinho’s artistic training naturally started by playing a lot. In his view, the market today is full of conditioned games, like Fast-food, which makes it hard for artists to embrace their playfulness and unleash their inventing potential.
For his early training, Martinho built countless habitable houses aside from socializing with some friends. “I liked to build boats and planes in wood,” he says. “I liked music, history… and stories. My dad was good at that. Like him, I loved books and, above all, I drew a lot … Well, this was my first training.”
130 x 150 cm
acrylic on canvas
2019
The peaks that we embrace voluntarily or involuntarily.
Journey of a natural-born artist
“I never had any vocational problems,” Martinho says, “because I always wanted to be an architect or a painter or something very similar.”
As a result, Martinho dabbled in various artistic practices since his youth. He was part of groups of amateur artists beginning to participate in several group exhibitions. And apart from his earlier role as an illustrator, he was part of theater and music groups. Eventually, he designed and built his own studio, focusing on his interests.
110 x 130 cm
acrylic on canvas
2019
Perhaps a conductor has ideal abilities to direct in politics.
110 x 130 cm
acrylic on canvas
2020
paradox between the speed imposed or desired and the final result.
Conceptual paintings process
Being an artist, or simply ‘being’, is the result of a process.
Over the course of his career, Martinho organized a portfolio, selected galleries, and directly went to show his work. “I needed to show my work,” he recounts, “to say that I was doing something that could be of interest to others. If I didn’t, only God would know that.”
Martinho was attentive to all available means. The internet was one of them – at a very rudimentary stage. “Today, of course, my career is still open…” he says.
Acrylic on canvas
Success as a consequence
For those who want to start an artistic career, Martinho has something to say to you. “It is important not to lose the critical sense argued,” he says, “even if the work they develop does not criticize anything.” The way he puts it, it is equally important to understand what your talent is and whether you really want to be an artist, or a YouTuber, or an astronaut.
He further emphasizes the importance of directing your focus to what you believe in and being persistent, determined, and persevering. “It is common to observe a tendency to artificially assume a status that one does not have ….. a tendency to see success (preferably fast) as an end and not as a consequence,” he says.
To see Martinho’s latest paintings, visit Saatchi Art >
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