Ana Malta
Ana Malta is a visual artist who lives and works in Lisbon. Her practice is rooted in painting and explores color, pattern, composition, and drawing materials as vehicles of an intuitive and unconscious visual language.
Biography
Bio
Ana Malta was born in 1996 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Academic Carrer
She studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and holds a Master’s degree in Creative Industries Management from Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto.
Professional Carrer
Ana Malta is a member of the artistic collective VÊS.TRÊS and has received several distinctions, including the José Mendonça Prize for Visual Arts (2023), the MEXTO Property Investment Acquisition Prize at ARCOlisboa (2025), and recognition as a Breakthrough Artist at ArtMadrid (2024). She is a finalist of the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize 2025. Her work has been presented at major international art fairs such as ARCOlisboa, Art Madrid, Art Paris, and the Hamptons Art Fair. She has held solo exhibitions in Lisbon, Madrid, Taiwan, and with her next exhibition to be held at This Is Not A White Cube.
Influences
Her work embraces experimentation and transformation, using “error” as a creative opportunity. Through an ongoing dialogue between intuition and structure, Ana Malta develops compositions where aesthetic tension, material exploration, and personal symbolism remain central.
Works from Ana Malta
BRINCAR com letras grandes
Ana Malta
Edition of /35 + 5 AP
Giclée print on paper
Signed and numbered by the artist
Velvet 270 g/m2 paper
70 × 50 cm
2025
*Artist's proofs are hand-finished.
BRINCAR com letras grandes("PLAYING in big letters") is a visually vibrant and provocative composition that delves into the ambiguity between playfulness and truth, lightness and emotional manipulation. The work confronts the viewer with a saturated visual universe - filled with childhood references, fragmented objects, and clashing textures - orchestrated within an intentional chaos.At the heart of this whirlwind lies a subtle yet loaded question: “Plena mente?” (a wordplay in Portuguese suggesting both “fully conscious” and “full of lies”). The phrase operates as both riddle and critique, questioning the social habit of saying something honest in the form of a joke - only to quickly retreat behind the phrase “just kidding” when vulnerability is exposed. A gesture that simultaneously reveals and denies.The painting becomes a reflection on dishonesty wrapped in playfulness, where a playful aesthetic is used to camouflage deeper emotional tensions. Visual elements like cherries, childlike patterns, and abrupt cutouts serve as metaphors for the desire to express honesty. “BRINCAR com letras grandes” refuses the superficiality of joking and invites a reflection on the courage it takes to stand by the truth - even when it arrives masked as laughter.
Entre eu e eu
Ana Malta
Edition of /12
Giclée print on paper
Signed and numbered by the artist
Smooth FineArt 270 g/m2 paper
29.7 × 42 cm
2025
Underdogs celebrates the 25th of April with the launch of a special series of editions by seven Portuguese artists who, although they did not experience the revolution firsthand, grew up with its legacy deeply embedded in the fabric of society. This year marks 51 years since the Carnation Revolution — a historical moment that ended decades of dictatorship and restored democracy in Portugal. The works emerged from an invitation by Underdogs to engage in a dialogue with iconic photographs by Alfredo Cunha — one of Portugal’s most important photojournalists. With a sharp and sensitive eye, Cunha captured defining moments of April 25, 1974, immortalising expressions of freedom, confrontation, silence, and hope.
Each artist was invited to choose, reflect on, and respond to one of these images, inviting viewers to step into a portal through time and offering a new, personal reading of the past. Originally presented in the exhibition Portais do Tempo, held at the former Lisnave shipyards in Almada in 2023, these powerful works are now being relaunched as limited editions — produced in the same format and with identical margins. Each edition will be sold at the same price, making them accessible to a wider audience and reaffirming the importance of keeping alive the reflection on what freedom means, and what it continues to mean, today.
Ana Malta creates a powerful pictorial reinterpretation of one of Alfredo Cunha’s most iconic photographs: the moment when Salgueiro Maia addresses the photographer, urging him to choose a side. In her painting, Malta carefully selects and paints elements from the original scene — the police car, the military, Terreiro do Paço — while introducing new figures: her “children of April 25th,” the generation born into freedom. Malta paints the scene from the opposite point of view to that of the original photograph, suggesting a shift in perspective — both literal and symbolic.
Discover other artists
Projects
Portais do Tempo
- Ana Malta
- Fidel Évora
- Inês Teles
- Márcio Carvalho
- Pedro Gramaxo
- Petra.Preta
- Raquel Belli




