António Sena (1941–2024)
Although he began his academic training at the Instituto Superior Técnico and the Faculty of Sciences of Lisbon, it was with engraving, at the Sociedade Cooperativa de Gravadores Portugueses that he began his artistic training. The CAM Collection holds 27 works by António Sena, including prints, drawings and paintings.
António Sena’s work was characterised by several typical elements such as letters, numbers and mathematical and geometric symbols. Over the decades, he introduced other figures into his artistic practice, such as calligraphy, light and colour, whilst maintaining paper as his primary medium for expression.
During his artistic journey he would cross paths with the Gulbenkian Foundation several times. Between 1965 and 1966, he studied at St. Martin’s School of Art in London with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In 1990, he held an exhibition at the Foundation’s Headquarters building, ‘António Sena. Works on Paper’, curated by art critic António Rodrigues, which brought together almost 200 paintings and drawings, created since 1964, that had never been seen before.
António Sena would return to the Foundation, this time to the CAM, in 2002, for an important exhibition dedicated to his paintings. Curated by Jorge Molder and Leonor Nazaré, ‘António Sena. Painting’ brought together around 35 works created between 1990 and 2002, with two of the paintings on display then incorporated into the CAM Collection.
In May 1986, José-Augusto França, the Director of the Centre Culturel Portugais (CCP), the headquarters of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation branch in Paris and the former residence of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, included a solo exhibition dedicated to the artist António Sena in the ‘L’Artiste du Mois’ cycle.
He was honoured with several awards, including the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Grand Prize, in 2011 and the EDP Prize for Drawing, EDP – Arte, in 2002.
Main image: António Sena, ‘Pintura’, 1972. CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, inv. 83P441.