Lisson Gallery Now Represents Dalton Paula, Painter of Portraits of Overlooked Black Brazilian Historical Figures – ARTnews

17 April 2025

Lisson Gallery will now represent Brazilian artist Dalton Paula, who is known for his paintings that depict important Black historical figures who have been overlooked until recently. Paula will have his first show with Lisson this September in New York.

Lisson will represent Paula alongside his two Brazilian galleries, Martins&Montero, which has locations in São Paulo and Brussles, and Cerrado Galeria de Arte in Brasilia and Goiânia. (He was previously represented in New York by Alexander and Bonin, which closed in early 2024.)

Paula is one of Brazil’s most closely watched artists, having had three separate solo shows in the country in 2022, at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, and Instituto Inclusartiz in Rio de Janeiro. He has been included in important group shows like the 2024 Venice Biennale, the 2018 New Museum Triennial, the 2016 Bienal de São Paulo, and the traveling exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” which debuted at MASP in 2018 and then traveled to several US museums.

Working across painting, photography, video, performance, and installation, Paula is perhaps best known for the two paintings he was commissioned to make for “Afro-Atlantic Histories” at MASP. Those portraits depict João De Deus Nascimento and Zeferina, two leaders of different freedom movements for enslaved people in Brazil in the 1790s and 1826, respectively.

Read the full interview with Max Durón in ARTnews here.