For their presentation in Art Basel 2026’s Unlimited sector, Gio Marconi, Gomide&Co, Nara Roesler, and Sprovieri present a collaborative project centered on an installation comprising two groups of paintings from Antonio Dias’s The Illustration of Art series (1971–1974), developed from 1972 onward and decisive in his trajectory.
In the works The Illustration of Art / Society / Model (1973) and The Illustration of Art / Art / Model (1973), the notion of the “model” is articulated in a critical and contradictory manner, addressing the social, economic, and political dimensions of art at a moment when market dynamics increasingly shaped artistic production.
Conceived in dialogue with international debates surrounding conceptual and political art, the series reflects on the conditions under which artistic production circulates and acquires meaning. It is within this body of work that Dias introduces one of his most significant formal devices: a black rectangle interrupted by the absence of a square segment, a visual gap that becomes the structuring element of the series.
Presented at the Paris Biennale in 1973, the installation consisted of two groups of paintings facing one another. One wall displayed six canvases under the inscription “The Illustration of Art / Art / Model”; the other repeated the arrangement while introducing an additional black canvas beneath the inscription “The Illustration of Art / Society / Model”.
By preserving repetition while simultaneously disrupting it through surplus, the “model of society” destabilizes the system and prevents its harmonious completion. The model of art may be contained within the model of society, Dias suggests, but not the reverse.
