Despite being self-taught, he revealed a deep desire to approach the field of visual arts with an experimental intention, allying himself with other young artists, such as Álvaro Lapa, Joaquim Bravo or António Charrua.

During the 1960s, his work is essentially the result of a constant crossing and questioning about the dominant aesthetics in the international art scene, wandering between informalism, formal abstraction and pop art, in a pictorial exercise in which pure color ends up making a point of extreme seduction, organizing a very particular and original opticality in the context of Portuguese painting. In fact, the definition of contrasting color fields will be responsible, in the second half of the 1960s, for a progressive abandonment of figuration inspired by a certain pop situation.

In the 70s, the chromatic explosion intersects with a formal will that requires a rigorous planning of the composition, reconciling geometric figures and flat colors, whence any traces of the brush passing over the surface of the painting. An experience that seems to mix two apparently antagonistic trends, pop and minimal art. With his participation in the exhibition After Modernism (1983), Palolo is already concerned with the expressive values ​​of the pictorial discipline, in some way following the context of a "Transvanguarda" where the presence of a figuration that maintains a dialogue makes sense again pertinent with a new play of colors and a more expressionist, almost gestural, pictorial technique.

In the 90s, Palolo will reconcile two moments of his career, creating conditions for the composition to harmonize in the consideration both of the bands of pure colors and the gestural and expressive exercise of the latest works. Between the 70s and 80s, and framed by the transdisciplinarity of the time, António Palolo presented some installations and made experimental films, developing a formal game where the kineticism of the image will be decisive, with repercussions in the pictorial work.