The art collector - Antonio Pessoa 2006 (mixed media) Antonio Pessoa . art-collecting . If back in the early 90's Antonio Pessoa's artwork was handled by half a dozen art dealers in Holland, Spain and Portugal, today the artist's major art pieces whereabouts became almost classified information to the point of specialized agents being hired in order to find art collectors from all over Europe and U.S.A. willing to negotiate for a reasonable fair price art pieces that years ago were indeed bought fot little more than a bunch of peanuts, and as time went by actually became true valuable material to be kept or for exchange. The artist doesn't seem to care much about this issue to say the least, despite living feeling the pressure of the ones who at the moment are investing to a great extent in his career and very specifically in his latest excellent artwork.

Antonio Pessoa art-collecting has become more and more fashionable in Spain, namely in Madrid and Barcelona, nevertheless not so fashionable but rather more seriously in northern Europe and United States.

While the artist obviously is more than glad in his consensual day after day comfort, the feeling of freedom he is so fond of, the life of luxury and ease he became naturally hooked on...the same is not quite applicable concerning the ones for obvious reasons so very much less apostolical about this complex situation.

Little else they can do but mitigate this rather ungrateful reality beginning by systematically avoiding at least the increasing enlargement of this unfair and out of control competitiveness. Let the dice roll, probably that's how the artist feels, however what's at stake far beyond the safety of his studio walls and concerning his artwork, keeps on being the headache of most of his partner friends and closest collaborators.

Antonio Pessoa's selfishness about this particular issue might be forgivable, nevertheless the tension and the struggle go on and on for some of the ones in the world who love him the most.

Jacob Kotsky

the get away - Antonio Pessoa 2004 (mixed media) Antonio Pessoa . in the Nowhere's Land . From 2002, the official end of the magnificent Romantic Period to 2006, the very beginning of the New Era period, Antonio Pessoa goes through one of the most intense emotional metamorphosis ever due to drastic changes, witchcraft of circumstances, like a rapid transformation of a larva into an adult, like someone real looking for a more suitable reality.

From London to Amsterdam, and once again from Atlantis to Barcelona, traveling by plane, by train or driving all night away, hand in hand with his muse that after all was his second wife, Antonio Pessoa in 2003 settles down in Barcelona, now with no wife, no muse, just a few good friends who happened to be there to make sure the artist was going to get back down to earth and more literally pinned to artwork just like back in the good golden years.

The source of the artist's inspiration now was thunder and rain, rather than the idyllic pastoral playground of the nostalgic Romantic Period.

And once again despite the cyclonic clouds and the emotional low pressures, Antonio Pessoa rises from hell like a knight in a shining armour, crushing the weakness sacrilege and the loosers temptations, with the sword of his brush, the power of his mind, the wise advice of his heart and the genetic endowment of his soul.

Coming back alive as a free lancer surviver from the Nowhere's Land, has been so it seems an accomplishment for a lifetime, the ultimate action of a man used to win, of a man used to overcome all sort of ruthless harsh emotional difficulties, deal with them successfully and then once again get on top of the wave for another long surfing season across the universe of Art, across the abstract notion of life, across the mesmerised perception of time.

dancing fools - Antonio Pessoa 2000 (acrylic on canvas) Antonio Pessoa . dances with wolves . I've been getting to know Antonio Pessoa, the man and the artist, more and more since the day we were introduced to eachother ten years ago. Before that I had been making systematic acquaintances with many artists from all over Europe and America. Crazy as it seems all of them with no exception whatsoever were, if not victimized by most of the art dealers, at least they were living and working with very little or no control at all upon the situation, almost resigned to the fate of helplessly having to live under pressure and worst of all in some cases going periodically through nervous breakdowns due to the unfair treatment they obviously felt they didn't deserve.

I had seen it so very often and so many times that at a certain point I subconsciously started believing that it was at once one of those unmodifiable rules and roles of the art scene backstage.

My growing friendship with Antonio Pessoa throughout these years gave me the amazing and amusing privilege of actually witnessing some of the best-sellers real life episodes I've ever come across.Antonio Pessoa dealing with art dealers is a must for anyone who fancies high quality theater with a first rate casting, if you get my drift.

Fresh, smart looking, smiling and arrogant as they come; looser looking, withdrawn and standoffish there they go. No magic tricks, no use of hypnotic trances, no Commedia Dell'Arte required nor conflicting arguments on bad terms.Just an artist cool as cool can be, listening in respectful silence, while the wolves dance and bark.

For when they stop barking and dancing, next thing they do is waiting for an answer.
Antonio Pessoa breaks the silence and suddenly I hear him talking about the weather, the latest movie he has seen and the striking book he is reading at the moment.

I sit and struggle myself in order to remain quite while a burst of laughter is dangerously growing inside of me. Nevertheless I'm polite enough to wait till they're gone, the door is closed and then I'm free.

Antonio Pessoa
. l'enfant terrible .

If the artist of the New Era is by now a cool grown up adult, a true experienced life's vet, tasting the privilege of a childish emotional intelligence totally under control, leading a life style unique, a poet enjoying the material world although managing to maintain a daily relationship with the silence and the universe, evaluating the pros and cons of all the metaphysical forces and reasoning, a man with a mission, an abstract mission just like all those who never take nihilism as a doctrine neither concise definition in order to establish a fake meaning to their lives...

...Antonio Pessoa back in his teens was already a blossoming artist although not just yet able to remain quite enough to turn his ideas and fantasies into responsible artwork.

Restlessly wandering all over Europe, the teenager was probably thinking he was living the time of his life and furthermore with God by his side.From London to Greece, from Ibiza to Amsterdam, from Paris to Berlin and even experiencing daring adventures of the One Thousand and One Nights kind along the sands of Morocco, the young boy without even knowing was already digesting the absorbing absurd, already coexisting with the macrocosmic concept of reality.

Antonio Pessoa at the age of fifteen drops high-school to learn music and at the age of eighteen moves first over to London and then to Amsterdam where he settles down his headquarters for several years.

In this stimulating city of Nederlands the young man becomes involved with many experienced dutch artists participating at the same time in many art workshops already establishing the validity of an outstanding talent and a unique style of spontaneous art expression.

Unfortunately his love adventures somehow get him out of the track, taking him to long seasons of absolute idyllic procrastination although in so doing the young artist develops the remote areas of human relations and human basic natural instincts, embracing it as his new perception of reality and self-discovery.

Ten years were still ahead before Antonio Pessoa actually becomes a devoted professional artist for good.

Jacob Kotsky

ANTONIO PESSOA
. Art , the communication tool .

Antonio Pessoa and myself we were at a dinner party and suddenly someone asked him the question wich never crossed my mind to ask him.

"Antonio, tell me, how intense is your urgency to paint?"

Antonio Pessoa didn't actually have to give a serious thought about it for so it seems he already had the answer right at the tip of his tongue, wich makes me conclude that the artist had been knowing the answer for quite a long time.

"Art only makes sense to me as long as it enables me to communicate with a great amount of people.If that doesn't happen then I don't need to paint."

It was said and done.The one who came up with that question as far as I can recall kept his mouth shut for the rest of the evening.Nevertheless Antonio Pessoa had just made his point.

So this explains many things, such as Antonio Pessoa's unmodifiable attitude, specifically as far as wide communication is concerned.Therefore the final verdict is that this artist number one priority has always been making Art works to be seen, loved or hated, never mind the good or bad critics, that's not what's at stake, the important is to be there, anytime, anywhere, but making sure to keep Art alive, breathing and preferably in universal circulation.

As a window open out to the world Antonio Pessoa, the artist, lets Art all out in the open, with the open Art vision of an open minded artist.

The New Era is communicating to the world, new and alive, the positive thinking of an artist who does it for the people, definitely a New Era, a new hopefulness for the best and for a better New World!


Jacob Kotsky

Picasso painting Dora Maar 1 - Antonio Pessoa 2000 (acrylic on canvas) ANTONIO PESSOA . Picasso painting Dora Maar . Being Antonio Pessoa's New Era obviously a result or a conclusion , more accurately, of his past life and work it's only natural my systematic research carefully setting his life and work upon an analytical balance providing us with a clear vision of what really happened in the mind and soul of an artist, unpredictable as he is, just apparently. Picasso painting Dora Maar collection is just an example of how Antonio Pessoa periodically, in his reliable, conscious, although unpredictable manner, sporadically shows himself up more rather as a story teller-movie director than simply as a painter.

The relationship between Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar is world wide known.Although a lot of mystery clouds still remain about this strange love affair, it's common knowledge that there has been some serious perversion and contradictory mixed up feelings. Antonio Pessoa takes this subject to the canvas in the year 2000 and later in Barcelona, 2004, the artist gives it a second version, coming up with a collection of more than fifty mixed media art works pieces.

Picasso painting Dora Maar by Antonio Pessoa, provides us with some substantial information of how chaotic and how driven by basic instincts this relationship has been.Here, specifically, Antonio Pessoa plays with humour and drama at the same time using on purpose rather shocking colors, probably eager to make sure the lurid details of this love affair had enough explicit definitions in order to turn the first visual impact into an easy understanding digestion.

Any viewer might eventually become slightly bewildered by this collection, nevertheless, definitely a Must in Antonio Pessoa's life and work.

ANTONIO PESSOA . the Black and White album... ... laughing at the world! Antonio Pessoa's Black and White album - 1997 / 1998, is definitely an impressing collection of more than 500 drawings (charcoal on paper) in wich the artist unquestionably prooves to be not only a technical fantastic automatism sketcher but most important of all, in this specific collection of drawings he clearly establishes once and for all the validity of his feverish talent. One actually has to see it to believe it.One by one, Antonio Pessoa in every drawing he did between 1997 and 1998, without knowing, without being aware of it or at least not being too much concerned about it, was as a matter of fact making History. The Black and White album stands as a proof of a unique capacity of putting down in magnificent drawings the most hidden primary instincts of human nature.

If not necessarily all of them, certainly most of them enter the dimension of life's absurdity, the ludicrous cynicism of a young artist looking at reality beyond rules or prohibitions, like a cosmic flying dark angel laughing at the world although wise enough to disguise himself as an artist and furthermore caricaturing the uglyness with the camouflage of the beauty and the fine arts excellence.

This impressive collection of drawings, is in my humble opinion one of the best charcoal on paper performances easily matching the skills and expertise of a Leonardo DaVinci, Rembrant or Salvador Dali.

More than maybe, because so it seems, Antonio Pessoa's Black and White album 1997 / 1998 was indeed after all the announcement of what was coming next.And this theory is actually prooving to be true for Antonio Pessoa's NEW ERA is clearly heralding that the show is going on!

Jacob Kotsky

ANTONIO PESSOA - influences - from Hieronymus Bosch .... to Andy Warhol - Pensive, might one become when trying to figure out who indeed were the inspiring masters that managed succeeding to leave their stamps into Antonio Pessoa's art work.That could indeed be a grand mystery considering Antonio Pessoa never actually talks about this particular issue, not even revealing a single tiny clue about who were the ones who in fact helped him waddling to the mixed formulas wich became year after year an omnipresence in the whole lot of his striking creations. Yet again, I would dare to say only a blind couldn't detect here and there or everywhere - for all that matters - unmistakable references leading us directly to names such as Jackson Pollock, Miró, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Vieira da Silva, Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Leonardo DaVinci, Hieronymus Bosch, and so on and on.

So therefore, on the whole, the process of actually becoming - if not an expert - at least provided with a reasonable perception of who indeed among all of them masters, more or less has in fact influenced, motivated and inspired Antonio Pessoa, the artist, for the past fifteen years, might turn out to be a fullfilling experience.

Unfolding this amazing, although puzzling mystery it is not quite such a big challenge as one might fear at first.Precisely the kees to the answers are printed all over Antonio Pessoa's canvases.One might as well gain a brand-new outlook of the artist's sources of illumination, till reaching the point of helplessly facing a miscellaneous selection of influences wich throughout the years have indeed been feeding Antonio Pessoa's encyclopedic knowledge, multifarious interests, Antonio Pessoa's polymorphic power of invention.

the artist and the one - Antonio Pessoa 1999 (acrylic on canvas) Antonio Pessoa . ten years after . From 1996 to 2006, Antonio Pessoa goes through one of the most intensive non-stop art work production odyssey, a long wandering systematic total direct action fine arts adventure.In so doing during these ten years voyage across the universe of modern Art, it's world wide known now that Antonio Pessoa actually explored almost every possibility, bringing onto the canvas amazing versions of the twentieth century's artistic tendencies using multiplex operations somehow completing and furthermore, closing the encyclopedism of one hundred years of Art History. Antonio Pessoa's Romantic Period, 1997 / 2002 is (or was) one could say, the apotheosis of these ten years of studio action, the excellence of perfection of this kind of methodological process of a year after year daily basis meticulous alchemistical real action to the point of exhausting actually almost all possibilities entirely.

Thereby in order to fully understand Antonio Pessoa's New Era, it is somehow compulsory to take the commitment of binding oneself to a course of analysis of variance concerning specifically these ten years of leaf begonia painting pilgrimage.

The medium brush being the sword of Antonio Pessoa while exorcising the hidden spirits of the Great Masters, eventually led him to very solid conclusions and very abstract doubts as well, after all turning out to be his Art vision today, no special comments required once one becomes familiarized with the background of today's Art expression of the artist, because it clearly seems as if Antonio Pessoa's New Era is defenitely here to stay.

Antonio Pessoa - about Before, After... and Now -

Life is a wonderful mystery itself.Picasso used to say "Art is a mediator between this strange hostile world and us".In order to entirely understand Art I would say it is highly recommended to accomplish knowing something about the artist.Unfolding an artist's life mystery can, must and should be a unique experience wich might as well turn our narrow vision concerning a particular artist into a row of unexpected revelations, an enlightning disclosure of facts and situations, or even a metaphysical reasoning perhaps with no material form or substance, rather more like an iconic display of transformations, qualitative changes, probably the conversion of the artist's syntatic structure into another related syntatic structure, a translation of a lifetime scene onto a two-dimensional surface.

Therefore to be able to fully understand Antonio Pessoa's NEW ERA, one should take the wise option of going backwards a few years and go through the pleasurable trouble of analyse the components and essential features of Antonio Pessoa's real motives and motivations, analyse the evidence of his life and work, a very good subject to psychoanalytical treatment in the particular case of a contemporary genius such as Antonio Pessoa.
Maybe a little effort is required but worth the time one might spend in the stimulating process of doing so.

In so doing we certainly shall come a whole lot closer to the general idea and soul of Antonio Pessoa's latest period and furthermore one of Antonio Pessoa's most interesting changes of light, style, stamp, art vision, inner perception and performance.

Antonio Pessoa - the contemporary Art wizard -

Contemporary Art reviewing requires a daily basis continuous information research.The endless amount of Art galleries and artists increases the difficult task of being more or less up dated and able to have a reasonable general idea, realistic enough to make sense.

In this universe of tendencies one might consider the ultimate possibility of going backwards and sit on the comfortable upholstered chair of the twentieth century Great Masters, such as Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Botero, Kandinsky and Picasso.

Nevertheless, new contemporary Art after all provides me with many positive aspects of legitimate artistic expression, such as Antonio Pessoa.

Antonio Pessoa's remarkable talent is very probably one of the most reliable references of contemporary Art. Totally devoted to his unmutable belief, he naturally manages to keep away of the struggling crowd, being effortlessly admited in the major highest elitist Art circles while his art works get a high rank circulation status of the classic phenomenon in this particular case leading to be part of the new century's Art History.

Despite the good and the bad critics, Antonio Pessoa keeps on the right track simply by following the nature of his belief, taming the monsters with a brave artist's attitude, by simply listening but not too much, apparently immune to the competion's friction, paging the inner mother of invention, and slow and gently printing it on canvas with the amazing mastery of the Old Masters and the easy going charming incantation uniqueness of an experienced contemporary Art wizard.

Jacob Kotsky

Exhibit Art show - Antonio Pessoa, Chigago 2004