Fão, Portugal, 1941 Ascânio Maria Martins Monteiro establishes in Rio de Janeiro in 1959 and concurs, between 1963 and 1965, with the National School of Fine Arts, where the artist starts doing his first works on wooden strips, exhibited in 1966 at the Salon Abril, in the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro. Graduated in 1969 with a degree in Architecture, the same year in which he does his first individual exhibit, Ascânio M.M.M. participates on innumerable editions of the International Biennale of Sao Pablo, of the Salon National of Modern Art, in Rio de Janeiro, and in the Panorama del Arte Actual Brasileño in Sao Pablo (Panorama of Brazilian Contemporary Art). Besides innumerable individual exhibits he does, the presence of his works outstands in the 2nd Biennale of Bahia (Salvador, 1968), the Salon of the Compass, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (1969), the 2nd Salon National of Contemporary Art (Belo Horizonte, MG, 1970), the 8th Resumen JB (Rio de Janeiro, 1970), 5 Escultores (5 Sculptors), at the Gallery Ipanema (Rio de Janeiro, 1973), Escultura brasileña (Brazilian Sculpture), at the School of Visual Arts in Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro, 1979), De lo Moderno a lo Contemporanéo ¿ Colección Gilberto Chateaubriand (From the Modern to the Contemporary ¿ Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection), at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (1981), Brasil ¿ 60 años de Arte Moderno. Colección Gilberto Chateaubriand (Brazil ¿ 60 years of Modern Art. Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection), in the Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 1982), Portrait of Country ¿ Brazilian Modern Art, in the Barbican Center (London, 1984), 2 Foro de Arte Contemporáneo (2nd Forum of Contemporary Art), in the Forum Picoas (Lisbon, 1989), 1st Biennale of Visual Arts of Mercosur (Puerto Alegro, 1997), Tri-dimensionality in Brazilian Art of the 20th century, in the Itaú Cultural (Sao Pablo, 1997) and Lo Moderno y lo Contemporáneo en el Arte Brasileño: Colección Gilberto Chateaubriand ¿ MAM/RJ (The Modern and Contemporary in Brazilian Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection ¿ MAM/RJ), in the Masp (Sao Pablo, 1998). Making use of the perceptive changes provoked by his works, Ascânio MMM plays a constant game of transparencies and opacity, recovers certain principles proposed by Russian constructivism, exploiting the articulation between different parts and serial modules, and inducing the variables, dialogues and oppositions existing between the surfaces and planes with which he works. With the aluminum, wood and other materials, the artist conjointly structures weight and levity in ways that are frequently vertical and that move transcendently. The sometimes-game-like aspect of his constructions adds up with the use of equilibrated coloring, which reveals a sort of ¿rational sensibility¿, in a procedure of extreme economy of the media used. In reference to architectural influence, Ascânio MMM¿s works are rigorous, precise, radical, and is destined to the gaze as well as to the thoughts.