Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (Lisboa, Portugal 1908 - Paris, França 1992)

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva was a Portuguese painter, printmaker, draftswoman, illustrator and sculptor who stood out on the European and international art scene throughout the 20th century. She began her artistic training as a child, studying drawing with Emília Santos Braga and painting with Armando Lucena, as well as attending anatomy classes at the Lisbon School of Medicine and learning music at home. In 1928, she moved to Paris, where she continued her training, studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and with renowned sculptors such as Bourdelle and Despiau, before choosing painting and printmaking as her main languages.

During her Parisian years, Vieira da Silva took lessons with masters such as Dufresne, Waroquier, Friesz, Fernand Léger, Bissière and Hayter. In 1930 she married the Hungarian painter Arpad Szenes, with whom she formed an intense artistic and personal partnership. Her first solo exhibition took place in 1933, when she showed illustrations made for a children's book. In 1939, with the advance of the Second World War, she returned to Lisbon, leaving her works in the care of the gallerist Jeanne Bucher. The following year, she went into exile in Brazil, where she lived at the Hotel Internacional in Rio de Janeiro and joined a circle of artists and intellectuals such as Murilo Mendes, Cecília Meireles and Carlos Scliar.

Also in 1940, together with Arpad Szenes, she created tile panels and portraits of scientists for the Escola Nacional de Agronomia, naming the ensemble Quilômetro 44 [Kilometer 44]. Back in Paris in 1947, Vieira da Silva began to exhibit regularly and drew critical attention, becoming the subject of a monograph by Pierre Descargues in 1949 and having her work promoted by the critic Guy Weelen from 1954 onwards. She became a French citizen in 1956 and broadened her artistic activity, making her first stained-glass window in 1963 in the city of Reims, France. Between 1968 and 1976, she produced stained-glass windows for the Church of Saint-Jacques, in collaboration with Charles Marq.

Recognized for her singular visual approach, which combines complex spatial structures with lyrical and abstract lines, Vieira da Silva received numerous awards during her lifetime, including at the 2nd and 6th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. A member of prestigious institutions such as the Académie des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres in Paris and the Royal Academy of Art in London, she left an important legacy to modern art. In 1990, the Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva was established in Lisbon, devoted to preserving and disseminating the couple's work.

Critical Commentary

Born in Portugal, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva studies at the Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa. She moves to Paris in 1928, where she studies sculpture. She then turns to painting and printmaking, studying with Fernand Léger (1881 - 1955). In 1930, she marries the Hungarian artist Arpad Szenes (1897 - 1985). Her works lie between figuration and abstraction. Her painting shows a concern with revealing the ambiguities of space and depth represented on a flat surface. Her paintings are dominated by the use of a grid, obtained through lines and their intersections, which form planes resembling colored squares, as in La Chambre à Carreaux [The Checkered Room], from 1935. In L'Atelier Lisbonne [The Lisbon Studio], from 1940, small squares rotate to form an interior in perspective. In the center of the composition, figures form a circle, recalling Matisse's The Dance, in a spectral register. The artist also acknowledges the importance of works by Bonnard (1867 - 1947), especially the painting La Nappe à Carreaux [The Checkered Tablecloth], which she sees on arriving in Paris, and of the abstract compositions of Torres Garcia (1874 - 1949).

Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva come to Brazil in 1940 because of the Second World War, settling in the old Hotel Internacional, in Rio de Janeiro. There they mix with intellectuals and painters such as Cecília Meireles (1901 - 1964), Murilo Mendes (1901 - 1975) and Carlos Scliar (1920 - 2001). In 1941, Vieira da Silva paints La Forêt des Erreurs [The Forest of Errors], a picture with an almost dizzying visual rhythm and a subdued color range, dominated by yellows and greens. The couple founds the Ateliê Silvestre, which becomes a center of artistic debate. They bring to Brazil the novelty of abstraction, which, in Vieira da Silva's case, evokes forms of association between colors, textures, rhythms and intervals.

Throughout her career, Vieira da Silva follows a coherent path, independent of the artistic currents she encounters. In the opinion of the art historian Nelson Aguilar, the impact of her work can be seen in Brazil, for example, in the tile panels made for Burle Marx's (1909 - 1994) landscape projects and also in the work of Carlos Scliar and Athos Bulcão (1918).

Critiques

"(...) Vieira da Silva raises and joins and paints her squares: each one follows the other, pursues it, in the building that, in the making, goes on. In the construction that comes into being, magically, as when, on a screen, a reversed projection makes the unexpected walls of a house rise from a heap of stones. The construction is making itself, with an inevitable and inescapable force. Making itself, simply. Not remaking itself: making itself. Each new nook, each step or each gleam of a gable is a thing on its own, a new thing that did not exist before, that carries with it no memory of the house's former presence, nor leaves the void of a vanished form. (...) And then, as in a system of parallel mirrors, in obedience to a frightening law, everything is reflected, multiplies its representations to mathematical infinity, turns into images of itself and gains, in irregularity and vertigo, a new reality, fiercer, deeper, an inevitable metaphysical power. It is the reality one sees all around, looked at from the terrible core of that same reality. Terrible, in an absurdity that has neither end nor palpable use (...)".
José Augusto França
FRANÇA, José Augusto. "Da poesia Plástica (Ed. Cadernos de Poesia 1950-1951)". In: WEELEN, Guy (org.) Vieira da Silva. Lisboa, Calouste Gulbenkian, 1970, p. 27.
 
"Reading a work by Vieira da Silva involves successive viewings. Each new approach reveals other underlying webs, and these are ceaselessly modified by a psychological overload. Like those fleeting characters of whom only a trace remains in the air, the painter is present in the middle of the canvas in a maze, a labyrinth of perspectives inscribed along different axes. Her dynamism bursts the surface into fleeting lines, like arrows furrowing space and reaching into depth.

One could not conceive of a painting more faithfully traced over the unfolding of a thought, with its retreats, its pauses at crossroads, its narrow corridors, its underground caves and its sudden moments of dazzlement. This art is always changing; it accepts no limitation, no end. Yet if it is given to us at a certain moment, it is in a state that lends itself to further extensions which the viewer can create. The viewer certainly receives the shock at the moment chosen by the artist, but can then add to it the discovery of details, of secrets not perceptible at first sight, which growing familiarity with the work itself reveals. The work is not exactly fixed, or is so only in appearance, always holding potentialities that are never exhausted.

Vieira da Silva proceeds first through quite vivid statements, laden with overlapping subtleties, insistent, obsessive. In the light of the imagination, forms break down into triangles or squares and hold subtle, varied colors. The sadness and poverty of everyday surroundings are dressed in magical garments. Going beyond their raw state, objects find strange kinships (...). Beings and objects are then very different from what one thought one saw; they move outside all logic, escaping their own weight, and the canvas has become, in René de Solier's expression, 'the place of the hybrid'".
Jacques Lassaigne
LASSAIGNE, Jacques. "A operação criadora". In: LASSAIGNE, Jacques & WEELEN, Guy. Vieira da Silva. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa/Publicações Europa-América, 1978.

"Vieira da Silva's painting, whatever the parameters within which it stood over a certain period, appears to be the work of an independent artist. Whether in Portugal, France or Brazil, Vieira da Silva followed her own path, independent of the major currents she encountered or passed through. Deep down, she is incapable of adapting, having become convinced, without romanticism, that she must work in silence, far from the bustle of society. In her view, it is the public that must go to meet the artist in an attempt to establish a dialogue, and never the artist who goes to meet the public. (...)

In chronological order: Cubism makes a strong impression on her. She appreciates forms resembling the elementary figures of geometry, the gears, the dismemberments, the percussive rhythms, the subtle facets that correspond to the vision of a society on the verge of industrialization. From Futurism, more through Marcel Duchamp's 'Le nu descendant un escalier', nº 2 (1911) than through the Italians, often too demonstrative, she perhaps retains a constant dynamism, and never the analysis of the unfolding trajectory of a body in space. From the Simultaneism embodied by Robert Delaunay (...) and Apollinaire, she takes the former only for the length of one painting: 'La machine optique' (1937), which for her represents a study in which she analyzes the movement of colors. Of Surrealism, she subscribes to nothing of the visible part of that iceberg of precise writing and refined technique, revised and corrected by Meissonier, and almost nothing of the submerged part, in the sense that Vieira da Silva embraces the alchemy of imagination and rejects not the unconscious, for she is too subtle to ignore it, but its influence on human conduct, its powers over human inventions. In essence, she dwells on ancient philosophy, particularly that of the Stoics, which she discovered when young. She found the keys that open those doors.

The importance of structures was revealed to her, perhaps by Torres Garcia, and her Portuguese shrewdness soon assimilated it. Bonnard continues to confound her with his strategy of color. Finally, from Impressionism, the great liberator of painting since the 19th century, Vieira da Silva captures light, which she constantly pursues from painting to painting because it corresponds to her inner light, as necessary to her as air and, in her view, poetically redemptive.
Vieira retained nothing of Expressionism, whatever its origin".
José Sommer Ribeiro e Guy Weelen
RIBEIRO, José Sommer & WEELEN, Guy. Vieira da Silva. Artista convidada. 20ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. Lisboa: Calouste Gulbenkian, 1989.

"In 20th-century art, the search for an immanent meaning had been taken to the point of absurdity by Duchamp as early as 1913. Under the conditions of modern times, its continuation had become impossible. Vieira's painting integrated this problem par excellence through its appropriation of the timeless, mythical figure of the labyrinth as a fragment of an inconceivable totality, thus preserving its symbolic complexity. The path, turning into detour and dead end, still evokes the search for a bearing. The center, marking only the end of life and the confrontation with death, nonetheless raises the question of where we come from and where we are going. Beyond the center, on the winding paths of return, the lost totality can be sensed as a reflection. Vieira's painting thus managed to integrate uncertainty as one of the determining conditions of modern consciousness. Her personal predicament as a stranger in this world intersects with the attitude of modern man".
Gisela Rosenthal
ROSENTHAL, Gisela. Vieira da Silva 1980-1992. À procura do Espaço Desconhecido. Lisboa: Colônia, Taschen, 1998.

Testimonials

"In Brazil I was deeply affected by events, so I lived somewhat with my head in Europe. That is why I got to know very little of Brazil. I knew a group of people I was very fond of, I knew the washerwoman, the maid at the boarding house. I did not really get to know Brazil, only a little of its people, very kind, good, intelligent people, very honest too. At that time we could not travel around the country, life was hard... but in Europe, life was so bad. I mean, for us it was already a miracle to live the way we lived in Brazil.

(...)

I left many works in Brazil, almost all given as gifts to our friends. Nobody bought anything in Brazil at that time. Arpad also left a lot behind. We were glad to sell paintings, and the people who bought from us were always very honest and paid what we asked. But they generally bought smaller paintings, which cost little. In a way, I think it was lucky that wealthy people did not seek us out to buy paintings. Had we fallen into favor with high society, we would not have had that contemplative life. But, of course, it was very beautiful because it ended, because it was agonizing for us. Everything felt very fragile. Luckily we suffered no disaster and caught no tropical disease - I only had hepatitis. We lived like a butterfly. (...)

The paintings I made in Brazil were very dark. I don't know why. I don't think it was a result of my worries. It must have been something to do with my eyesight. I probably saw the paintings as lighter than I painted them. I don't know. Anyway, it was a time of tension, that time in Brazil".
Vieira da Silva
SILVA, Maria Helena Vieira da. "Vivíamos assim como uma borboleta". In: MORAIS, Frederico. Tempos de Guerra: Hotel Internacional/Pensão Mauá. Rio de Janeiro: Galeria de Arte Banerj, 1986, n.p. (Ciclo de Exposições sobre Arte no Rio de Janeiro, 6).

Solo Exhibitions

1933 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1935 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Galeria UP, organized by the writer and painter Antônio Pedro
1937 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1942 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at MNBA
1944 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Galeria Askanasy
1946 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Marian Willard Gallery, organized by Jeanne Bucher
1947 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1949 - Lille (France) - Solo, at Galeria Trouvaille
1949 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Pierre
1950 - Stockholm (Sweden) - Solo, at Galeria Blanche
1951 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1951 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Pierre
1952 - Lille (France) - Solo, at Galeria Dupont
1952 - London (England) - Vieira da Silva, at Redfern Gallery
1954 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Cadby Birch Gallery
1955 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Pierre
1956 - Basel (Switzerland) - Solo, at Galeria de Arte Moderna
1956 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Saidemberg Gallery
1957 - Geneva (Switzerland) - Solo, at Galeria Perron
1957 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Galeria Pórtico
1957 - London (England) - Solo, at Hannover Gallery
1958 - Bremen (Germany) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Kunsthalle Bremen
1958 - Hannover (Germany) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Kestner Gesellschaft
1958 - Wuppertal (Germany) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Kunst und Museumverein
1960 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1961 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Knoedler Gallery
1961 - Washington (United States) - Solo, at Phillips Art Gallery
1962 - Mannheim (Germany) - Solo, at Städtische Kunsthalle
1963 - Jerusalem (Israel) - L'Inclémence Lointaine, at Bezalel Museum Jerusalem
1963 - Lisbon (Portugal) - L'Inclémence Lointaine, at Galeria Gravura
1963 - New York (United States) - Vieira da Silva: Temperas, at Knoedler Gallery
1963 - Paris (France) - Vieira da Silva: Temperas, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1963 - Washington (United States) - Vieira da Silva: Temperas, at Phillips Art Gallery
1964 - Grenoble (France) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Musée de Grenoble
1964 - Turin (Italy) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Museu Cívico
1965 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Albert Loeb Gallery
1966 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Academia dos Amadores de Música
1966 - New York (United States) - Solo, at Knoedler Gallery
1967 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1969 - Paris (France) - Les Irrésolutions Résolues, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1969 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jacob
1970 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Galeria 111
1970 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Galeria Judith Cruz
1970 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Solo, at Galeria São Mamede
1970 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
1970 - Porto (Portugal) - Solo, at Galeria Zen
1971 - Montpellier (France) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Musée Fabre
1971 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher, on the occasion of the publication of a study by Dora Vallier
1973 - Orléans (France) - Retrospective, at Museu de Arte e de História
1974 - Geneva (Switzerland) - Solo, at Artel Galerie
1976 - Luxembourg (Luxembourg) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective
1976 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Museu Nacional de Arte Moderna, Centre Georges Pompidou
1977 - Paris (France) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
1977 - Paris (France) and Lisbon (Portugal) - Retrospective, at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
1978 - Aalborg (Denmark) - Vieira da Silva: Retrospective, at Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum
1980 - Barcelona (Spain) - Vieira da Silva: Paintings, at Galeria Joan Prats
1980 - The Hague (Netherlands) - Solo, at Galeria Nova Spectra
1985 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Portraits, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
1986 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeria Jeanne Bucher
1987 - São Paulo SP - Vieira da Silva in Portuguese Collections, at Masp
1988 - Paris (France) - Solo, at Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais

Group Exhibitions

1931 - Paris (France) - Salon d'Automne, at Grand Palais
1931 - Paris (France) - Salon des Surindépendants
1936 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes: Abstract Paintings, at Ateliê de Vieira da Silva
1944 - London (England) - Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, at Royal Academy of Arts
1944 - Norwich (England) - Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, at Norwich Castle and Museum
1945 - Bath (England) - Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, at Victoria Art Gallery
1945 - Bristol (England) - Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, at Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery
1945 - Edinburgh (Scotland) - Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, at National Gallery
1945 - Glasgow (Scotland) - Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, at Kelvingrove Art Gallery
1945 - Manchester (England) - Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings, at Manchester Art Gallery
1945 - Paris (France) - Salon des Réalités Nouvelles
1950 - Paris (France) - Vieira da Silva and Reichel: Gouaches, at Galerie La Hune
1952 - Paris (France) - Salon de Mai
1952 - Pittsburgh (United States) - Pittsburgh Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, at Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh
1953 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão dos Estados - acquisition prize
1954 - Basel (Switzerland) - Vieira da Silva, Bissière, Schiess, Ubac and Germaine Richier, at Kunsthalle
1954 - Goiânia GO - Exhibition of the National Congress of Intellectuals
1954 - Venice (Italy) - 27th Venice Biennale
1955 - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - Vieira da Silva and Germaine Richier, at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
1955 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Caracas Biennial - 3rd prize
1958 - New York (United States) - Guggenheim Museum Annual Award - honorable mention
1958 - Pittsburgh (United States) - Carnegie Institute - 4th prize
1961 - São Paulo SP - 6th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo Sobrinho - international grand prize for painting
1967 - Treigny (France) - Vieira da Silva and Étienne Martin, at Castelo de Ratilly
1976 - Paris (France) - Les Dessins d'Arpad Szenes et Vieira da Silva, at Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou
1976 - Sochaux (France) - Group show, at Casa de Artes e Lazeres de Sochaux
1976 - Metz (France) - Group show, at Museu de Metz
1976 - Luxembourg (Luxembourg) - Group show, at Museu do Estado de Luxemburgo
1979 - São Paulo SP - 15th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1980 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Tribute to Mário Pedrosa, at Galeria Jean Boghici
1982 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Brazil 60 Years of Modern Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
1982 - London (England) - Brazil 60 Years of Modern Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, at Barbican Art Gallery
1984 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes, at Galeria EMI-Valentim de Carvalho
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Six Decades of Modern Art: Roberto Marinho Collection, at Paço Imperial
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Wartime: Hotel Internacional, at Galeria de Arte Banerj
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Wartime: Pensão Mauá, at Galeria de Arte Banerj
1989 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Six Decades of Brazilian Modern Art: Roberto Marinho Collection, at Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão
1989 - São Paulo SP - 20th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal

Posthumous Exhibitions

1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at Kunsthaus Zürich
1993 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil, 100 Years of Modern Art, at MNBA
1993 - São Paulo SP - Modern Drawing in Brazil: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Modern Drawing in Brazil: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, at MAM/RJ
1994 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Modern Art: A Selection from the Roberto Marinho Collection, at Masp
1994 - São Paulo SP - Memory of Freedom, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1994 - São Paulo SP - Poetics of Resistance: Aspects of Brazilian Printmaking, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Manuel de Brito Collection: Images of 20th-Century Portuguese Art, at MAM/RJ
1995 - São Paulo SP - Manuel de Brito Collection: Images of 20th-Century Portuguese Art, at Masp
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Modern and the Contemporary in Brazilian Art: Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection - MAM/RJ, at Masp
1999 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Mostra Rio Gravura. Brazilian Literature and Printmaking, at ABL
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - When Brazil Was Modern: Visual Arts in Rio de Janeiro from 1905 to 1960, at Paço Imperial
2000 - São Paulo SP - Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva: Brazilian Period, at Pinacoteca do Estado
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Watercolor, at Centro Cultural Light
2001 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Period, at Fundação Casa França-Brasil
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2002 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2003 - Brasília DF - Brazilian Art in the Fadel Collection: From the Restlessness of the Modern to the Autonomy of Language, at CCBB
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian Art: From the 1930 Revolution to the Postwar Period, at MAM/RJ
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Autonomy of Drawing, at MAM/RJ
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Order x Freedom, at MAM/RJ
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Century of a Brazilian: Roberto Marinho Collection, at Paço Imperial
2004 - São Paulo SP - Five Painters of Portuguese Modernity, at MAM/SP
2005 - São Paulo SP - The Century of a Brazilian: Roberto Marinho Collection, at MAM/SP

Source: Itaú Cultural