Mr. Alonso Morales, came to Amsterdam from Madrid this summer for our business deal. It was easy because he liked me and I liked his prices.
For 6.500 euros I had in my hands 15 watercolors by Antonio Pessoa, art work from the 90's, the world wide known Antonio Pessoa's Romantic Period.
I kept ten of them for my private collection and my father bought me the other five pieces for 800 euros.
I never actually told me how much they had cost me, but one thing is true, my father was more than glad and therefore he asked me no questions.
Among the Art collectors in Amsterdam, Antonio Pessoa's new collection called the NEW ERA is actually becoming more and more popular...and expensive too.
I've tryed to contact the artist personally and after two weeks struggling to pass through his studio's team people, I succeeded at last just by approaching him at the front door right there in Leisplein, where he lives when he is in Amsterdam.
I told him the trouble and the whole adventure I went through to get some of his work.
Probably he took pity of me that day, because after we had breakfast together he kindly invited me to his huge studio and next thing I knew he was handing me two signed posters of his latest collection. That sure just made my day!
Art-collecting is a striking adventure, if you ask me.
Once you get hooked on it there's no way back.
Besides being one of the safest investments of our times, Art-collecting is a wonderful interesting hobby.
If my favourite sculptor is Marjolijn Mandersloot, my favourite painter is Antonio Pessoa, both of them living in Amsterdam.
Art-collecting Antonio Pessoa's paintings, mixed medias, drawings and watercolors has become a real dangerous obsession for me for the past two years.
I've looked all over Amsterdam but the prices were so high that I finally gave it up and decided to look somewhere else.
I made hundreds of phone calls to Paris, New York City, Vienna, and the prices in there were still beyond my possibilities.
I had one option left. Going to Spain.
Antonio Pessoa has his main studio in Barcelona for some years now.Once again I tryed to contact him but he was away to Canary Islands.
I checked out some Art dealers in Barcelona and they actually had some Art work by Antonio Pessoa, but yet again the prices were beyond my hand reach.
Back to Amsterdam I spent one month, roughly, in front of the computer mailing all the Art galleries in smaller cities in Spain and Madrid...as the last waterhole, so to speak.
Surprise, surprise, it was worth have given it a try.In cosmopolitan Madrid I found a true gentleman owning more than 200 watercolors by Antonio Pessoa.
I had found the gold mine at last!
Sonia Dekkers . Amsterdam
The NEW ERA 2006- Antonio Pessoa -
Antonio Pessoa's NEW ERA straddles the divine between a romantic attachment to the immediacy of contemporary Art and a fascination with the revelations of technology.
Color and motion, being the two elements subjected to re-interpretation.
Antonio Pessoa's abstract chronicle the changes that gather around a fixed point throught various manipulations of data and materials.
In the NEW ERA collection Antonio Pessoa meticulously registers the repercussions of waves of shapes and sometimes turns them into micrographs.Such patterns unfold as a result of conceptual algorithms based on the movement of colors and shapes.
Raoul Dumas - Brussels
ANTONIO PESSOA- World Wide -
In his new work , Antonio Pessoa evokes an impression of timeless sensations, the perception of light sifting through layers of stunning color.
The world Antonio Pessoa creates in each composition seems an enigmatic and faraway transcendental expanse.There is the sense of being absorbed into something larger than the mind can come to terms with.
Then a hardedge line, perhaps reference to an architectural form, catches the eye, and one's concentration is pulled back into the moment.
Antonio Pessoa uses color to describe a sense of vaste space, now awesome silence and serenity, then agitated rhythms.
Antonio Pessoa's work has been shown in many group exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States.
Raoul Dumas - Brussels
ANTONIO PESSOA- the artist -
Antonio Pessoa makes art works of imaginary situations.Light dots in motion strech onto multicolored backgrounds.
Also every surface hides a symbolic network where each element is linked to the next forming a tenuous chain.
Most of Antonio Pessoa's pieces replicate the way nature works in its minute mechanisms.They define an implacable system of loose geometry-a series of repetitions with built in mutations.
Antonio Pessoa's work declares war to continuity by detaining the viewer in the instant prior to the influx of new data.
His work builds a polychromatic discourse based on a collection of multicolored spaces, a thesaurus of interludes and emotional transitions.
Antonio Pessoa generates a perception power outage (or preoccupation) that can provoke a genuine vertigo.
Raoul Dumas - Brussels
ANTONIO PESSOA - Colors and Shapes -
Through his thecnical mastery and his socialite hobnobbery, Antonio Pessoa's latest art works are among the finest of contemporary art.
Collectively his work paint a warm picture of colors and shapes.
It is a reflection on Antonio Pessoa's work and life that he paints colorful compositions in strikingly different lights.
Antonio Pessoa's iconic images drip with sexuality and objectification of the subject.
Though his notions of colors and shapes sometimes lack the objectifying impersonality of the abstraction counterparts, Antonio Pessoa often manages to squeeze his contemporary sensibilities into his compositions.
Raoul Dumas - Brussels
ANTONIO PESSOA- The Visual World -
The same might be said of his conceptual colors.Here is the jungle, the savannah, the sea or the cosmos, resplendent with colors and shapes, Art in its primal abundance, and sometimes at first we see only chaos, the anarchy of the wild. Look again, however, and a new order begins to emerge, as things that had been hidden from us at first viewing soon begin to reveal themselves.
And again, Antonio Pessoa uses color itself as a foil for his own whimsical investigations into the complex forms that underline the visual world around us.
In so doing, he poses a certain questions: how do the eye and mind interpret what we see, and how does human expression relate to colors own expression?'
Those are complicated questions, but Antonio Pessoa's approach is both serious and playful.
It all begins with a mark of line, for despite years of traditional Art school training as a painter, the direct calligraphic gesture has been at the root of Antonio Pessoa's creative impulse since childhood.
Gaby Hoffman . New York, NY
ANTONIO PESSOA - The Public Man -
Gaze into a room full of people, all of them talking at once.With mouths agape, they blend into an amorphous mass, their features running into each other so it's hard to tell where one begins and the next one ends.We have all been to such gatherings and they are all different, yet they are all the same:the human swarm in its full-throated glory.It might seem unusual for a painter to pursue any sort of unique visual insight into such a scene, yet Antonio Pessoa has done just that, affording him the distinction of being the rare artist who dares to make an art out of the chattering masses.
Rendered in parti-colored serpentine coils and clipses, Antonio Pessoa's paintings morph from a mob into a mystery in his series, The Audience.More than an audience, they are also a maze of interlocking forms in wich the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here, Antonio Pessoa deals with figures as encoded information, calligraphic patterns and designs that compromise intriguing compositions.
Gaby Hoffman . New York, NY
ANTONIO PESSOA - New "Work" City -
Despite all those years spent studying traditional, modern and post modern Art, Antonio Pessoa continues to pursue a vision that is very much his own, but wich has parallels in several traditions.His creative method has much in common with the automatism of the surrealists, as expressed in the automatic drawings of Andre Masson and later, Joan Miró and Salvador Dali.
Spontaneity as a method dates to the ancient Zen tradition of gestural ink drawing, wich influenced not only the surrealists but also, by extension, the abstract expressionists and even the swirling drip canvases of Jackson Pollock.
And indeed, those swirling, elliptical and spiraling forms so beloved by Pollock and Antonio Pessoa, can be seen as modern manifestations of similarly curvilinear expression found in medieval illuminated manuscripts.
Gaby Hoffman . New York, NY
ANTONIO PESSOA - Art Fits New Era -
It's that concern for movement, wich propels his series of NEW ERA abstracts, art works that reflect a sense of motion and energy.
Antonio Pessoa regards these as analogous to music and the workings of an orchestra in the way he suggests rhythm, while color and shadow give melody.Accents highlight crescendo, and the interior spaces offer rest.
For Antonio Pessoa, his Art fits nearly with his belief that we are all part of a totality in wich everything is part of everything else.
Antonio Pessoa believes in the inter connectedness of life.He sees universe as a kind of web in wich all of our lives are part of the larger system, and therefore no one or the other of us is more important ; we are all vital to it.
We are here to evolve, to move towards the unknown in order to elevate our collective consciousness, in the attempt to become more aware of ourselves and our surroundings.
Gaby Hoffman , New York, NY
ANTONIO PESSOA - Barcelona Inn -
After Antonio Pessoa broke up with his super-productive Romantic Period back in 2002, the artist moved to Barcelona.
Here begins his cyber space voyage, so to speak.
His first years in Barcelona, Antonio Pessoa is not painting so much anymore.He becomes more interested in media communication and in the Art galleries scene around the world.
Nevertheless his two Art shows in Chicago give him the stimulation he needed in order to go back to the studio's hard work.
One month later, before Christmas 2004, the Hotel Caspe in Barcelona opens its doors to Antonio Pessoa's art work , turning out to be an outstanding astounding big hit art exhibit.
However, new concepts of art were quickly growing and taking shape in the artist's mind.
Two years later it was going to be the world wide known Antonio Pessoa's period called the New Era!
Marc Gilot
ANTONIO PESSOA - 1998 the Romantic Period -
By 1998, Antonio Pessoa is already a fine arts vet.
He can afford 3 studios by then and he works harder than ever before.
Names like Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Picasso, just to mention a few, make him cook a strange but wonderful miscellaneous assemblage of influences leading him along the years till 2002, when his Romantic Period enters the beginning of its end for good.
Crazy as it seems, Antonio Pessoa between 1997 and 2002 actually accomplishes more than 1000 pieces on canvas, let alone watercolors, drawings and acrylics on paper.
Only two painters in the twentieth century could match his production capacity and working rhythm.
Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí!
Marc Gilot
ANTONIO PESSOA
The late 90's Black and White album
Antonio Pessoa's Black and White album , 1997 - 1998 is unquestionably one of the artist's most interesting and controversial periods.
To begin with he sticks to classic media such as charcoal on paper, on the other hand, making the most of his super-technical drawing skills, he comes up with extremely daring subjects, eclectic and eventually provoking sexual oriented suggestions.
A collection of more than 400 drawings done in less than one year with a high quality five stars touch in every of them leaves us near astonishment and surrendered to the fact that indeed we are talking here about one of the contemporary art ever greatest artists of our times!
Marc Gilot
ANTONIO PESSOA's Best of
Probably talking about Antonio Pessoa's best of is talking about his whole career, for it seems quite obvious that for the past 17 years this artist has no doubt proved
to be a prodigious master of contemporary art.
From 1995 to 2006 he went through amazing changes, always surprising the public in every art show, restlessly keeping on pursuing new formulas of art expression and improving at light speed with the dedication and concentration of someone who doesn't look back, with the self-stimulus of an artist who knows where he's going to and knows he's going to make it.
Antonio Pessoa might change his style here and then but one thing is for sure, he never changes the positive thinking, the straightforward attitude.
Therefore one comment seems to be enough.
Antonio Pessoa is always doing his Best of!
Marc Gilot
ANTONIO PESSOA- Amsterdam -
Antonio Pessoa was booked at the Marriot Hotel with some friends.
We had dinner and spent the evening together and we went on and on till the light of dawn.
By then I was tired but I had got so much information that I really had to sleep on it in order to see things more clear.
As days went by I began to get the whole idea of this artist's past, present and future.
Antonio Pessoa was the sort of restless creator, always changing throughout the years, back and forth.
From the moment I found out what Antonio Pessoa was doing in 2006 I became speechless.
He had been working at his studio in Amsterdam and there was quite plenty to see of his new period called the New Era.
Most of it were mixed media art works, with outstanding colors and a super motion touch in all of them.
I have been to many art exhibitions in the past five years but nothing so overwhelming as Antonio Pessoa's New Era's collection.
In my art critic perspective this was much more than contemporary art.
This was indeed a flight over into the future!
Alexandra Kellerman . Amsterdam.nl
ANTONIO PESSOA- Den Haag, nl -
When I first met Antonio Pessoa at the Holland Art Fair, he looked to me as the average guy.Not too tall, not too small, communicative and shy at the same time, blue jeans, t-shirt and curly hair with no special style.
Anyway, looking into his eyes, I knew right away that something was going on.Something so deep and so intense that only a blind couldn't see.
He showed me his art work and that was it!
At first glance , great technical pieces, but somehow oldfashioned.But as I took a closer look at every each
of them, the answer came right away as a unexpected revelation.
It was his diary, his selfbiography hanging in there and telling me stories and secrets I felt only I could understand.
That was his "Romantic Period"-as I learned later - from 1997 to 2002.Amazing!
It was pretty obvious there were lots of old Masters influencies but on the whole it was an interesting mixed combination, despite being slightly old fashioned, maybe that was the magic of it.
Alexandra Kellerman , Amsterdam nl
ANTONIO PESSOA- God's gifted supreme invention -
The Art of Antonio Pessoa gives us the feeling of times, gives us the touch of human heart and soul, sends us into a cosmos of awareness, brightness and fantasy.
His restless working method gives us the daily surprise that we all need, the daily hope to see and feel something new, like a brand-new revelation capable of smoothing our fears and anxieties.
Sure there are many interesting artists...
However Antonio Pessoa jumps over the edge of the possible dimension into the notion of the God's gifted supreme invention!
Many upcoming surprises, that's for sure.
Meantime, please do fasten your seat belts for you're about to take and experience the most striking flight around the planet of Art Supreme...!
Nancy Anderson . Paris, fr
ANTONIO PESSOA - the man behind the Fable -
Antonio Pessoa, one of the greatest artists of our times provides us with excellent Art works, interesting reviews and comments and a unique way of communication know how.
He's a Must for all Art lovers, Art collectors and Art galleries.
Driven by a restless need to communicate, Antonio Pessoa is a non-stop systematic sort of artist, a true dinosaur of the old principles, despite his everpresent avant-garde vision of "reality" wich he translates so controversially into incredible contemporary Art pieces.
As a true communicator Antonio Pessoa definitely is not the kind of the enclosed artist ego-triping about the studio, selfishly delighted playing God.
He embraces life the way it is, socializing with everyone he comes across, behaving like the average citizen with that peculiar cool charming posture and attitude of a supreme fine arts professional, period.
Entering his studio is like going to a party, a place where you can relax, get to know the artist and get to know some of his friends and working team.A Must experience.
He wanders about the house showing his friends and unexpected unknown visitors the magic of life, the great privilege of being and feeling alive, sharing whatever is available at a certain moment and giventh the circumstances.
He retreats to the Art studio for a couple of hours with one or two of his closest friends, then all of a sudden comes back to join the reunion, cheerful and enthusiastic just about anything, Antonio Pessoa reflects an open-minded spirit totally devoted to the world, life, Art and friendship.
His lack of interest for money (maybe because due to the fact that he's actually a very weathy lucky artist) makes any Art dealer's life very difficult indeed.Witnessing these bizarre episodes is rather amusing and amazing, a film with a steady stream of pranks and pratfalls, ludicrous as it is.
Antonio Pessoa generates natural stimulus, and sure he's getting the deserved feedback for his career is ascending to a first rate big time success!
Nancy Anderson . Paris
ANTONIO PESSOA - The 21th century Fox -
The NEW ERA, Antonio Pessoa 2006 ia a Must, a highly recommendable collection of the artist's latest projects.
It doesn't seem to be pretentious to the point of struggling to show the world something new, whatever that means.
The NEW ERA , Antonio Pessoa 2006, it's a natural effortless display of ideas overflowing in his hiper-creative mind, not only with decorative purposes but essentialy aiming to reach his own perception of emotions through constructive conceptual compositions, pleasant to the eyes and real-genuine to our hearts.
The NEW ERA, Antonio Pessoa 2006 is right now available to anyone who enjoys high quality Art, a collection breaking up with the past but not yet breaking the rules.
For Antonio Pessoa doesn't feel the need to break the rules in order to express himself, he doesn't need to break the rules to gain publicity at all costs.
He leads his life and his work with no need to rush, taking life as it comes and creating on a daily basis as a religious ritual of his own.
Definitely a cool guy in the contemporary Art scene.
