Ana Malta is featured in Lisboetas, an initiative by Lisbon City Council that gives visibility to different voices of the city, bringing together testimonies that reflect distinct paths, practices and ways of belonging to Lisbon. In the video shared through the Council’s official social media channels, the artist offers a compelling reflection on how Lisbon continues to shape her visual language, her identity, and her creative process.
In her testimony, Ana Malta states:
“Lisbon inspires me to create because of something very Portuguese and very traditional: azulejos. I am Ana Malta, a visual artist from Lisbon. I studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, and in 2022 I devoted myself entirely to being a visual artist professionally. But I have been painting for many years. At the beginning of a painting, I never know what is going to happen. My creative process is different because I am not an artist who makes sketches or draws in sketchbooks, or who thinks beforehand about a composition or colours. Everything is very fluid and intuitive, and it has a great deal to do with my day-to-day life. I write words and phrases in the works, which act almost like clues, allowing the whole painting to be read afterwards. I am quite a positive person, very extroverted, and through my personality I try to illustrate what I write. My work is an outpouring. Lisbon inspires me enormously to create. At the same time, because I also travel, I begin to mix all kinds of patterns and cultures from all the places I have been, but there is always some trace that leads back to my nationality, to my city.”
“Lisbon inspires me to create because of something very Portuguese and very traditional: azulejos. I am Ana Malta, a visual artist from Lisbon. I studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, and in 2022 I devoted myself entirely to being a visual artist professionally. But I have been painting for many years. At the beginning of a painting, I never know what is going to happen. My creative process is different because I am not an artist who makes sketches or draws in sketchbooks, or who thinks beforehand about a composition or colours. Everything is very fluid and intuitive, and it has a great deal to do with my day-to-day life. I write words and phrases in the works, which act almost like clues, allowing the whole painting to be read afterwards. I am quite a positive person, very extroverted, and through my personality I try to illustrate what I write. My work is an outpouring. Lisbon inspires me enormously to create. At the same time, because I also travel, I begin to mix all kinds of patterns and cultures from all the places I have been, but there is always some trace that leads back to my nationality, to my city.”
A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, Ana Malta has developed an artistic practice shaped by colour, writing, intuition and a close connection between personal experience and painterly construction. Her work unfolds through a spontaneous and emotional register, in which words, phrases and visual references emerge as extensions of intimate lived experience, transformed into painting.
The artist’s participation in Lisboetas further affirms the recognition of her trajectory within the cultural life of the city and highlights the distinctive way in which her practice remains rooted in Lisbon, even as it incorporates influences drawn from other geographies and cultures.
Ana Malta’s presence in this project by Lisbon City Council underscores the relevance of her work within the landscape of contemporary Portuguese art.
