António Bolota was born in Benguela, Angola, in 1962, and moved to Portugal at 15 years old, settling in Lisbon, where he lives and works to this day. Bolota graduated in Civil Engineering, where he developed his professional activity. During the 1990s, Bolota reawakened his interest in art, and, in 2008, he ended up attending the Art History and Aesthetics Program and finishing an Advanced Course in Sculpture at Ar.Co — Centro de Arte e Comunicação (Lisbon). His professional activity has offered him the possibility to revive and give new temporary uses to old buildings undergoing reconversion, which is how he created and helped establish many independent exhibition venues in Lisbon, such as Bartolomeu5 (2003–2004), Avenida 211 (2004–2012) and Ar Sólido (programed by Bolota and Marco Pires, from 2013 and 2015). The venue Avenida 211 is in a wonderful building in Avenida da Liberdade promenade, and it has become a central place for visual artists to produce and present their work, featuring dozens of studios and some of the most dynamic exhibition venues in Lisbon. These venues include Kunsthalle Lissabon, Parkour, Barbershop, Escritório, and Sala Bebé, run by young curators or artists.
His artistic work mainly takes shape in sculptures, in which the metaphysical themes of materials, weight, balance, engineering, and architecture are used as tools to prepare a semantic theme, confronting the viewer with physical world elements everyone knows and creating new interpretations of the world itself.
