page_title: Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Helena Vieira da Silva / Work
context_page_description: Maria Helena Vieira da Silva was a Portuguese abstract painter. She was considered a leading member of the European abstract expressionism movement known as Art Informel. Her works feature complex interiors and city views using lines that explore space and perspective. She also worked in tapestry and stained glass.
context_section_description: Despite being a French citizen, Vieira da Silva is considered to be Portugal's greatest contemporary artist by many. In 1988 in honor of her 80th birthday, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon and the Grand Palais in Paris had major retrospectives of her work. 
  Vieira da Silva’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the Guggenheim Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
  Vieira da Silva’s initial work featured a decorative style of abstract patterning. She enjoyed toying with the idea of space and creating a false perception of space by having her painting set on a neutral background with flecks color giving a sense of depth.
  In the 1930s Vieira da Silva began producing her characteristic works which were heavily impastoed, and overlaid with a complex arrangement of small rectangles. In 1943, Vieira da Silva exhibited in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York. As she evolved as an artist, she focused more on spatial manipulations using a wide range of techniques. She employed detailed patterns to create fabricated architectural forms and worked with complex lines, luminous spots and patterned surfaces. By the late 1950s she was internationally known for her dense and complex compositions, influenced by the art of Paul Cézanne and the fragmented forms, spatial ambiguities, and restricted palette of cubism and abstract art. She is considered to be one of the most important Post-War abstract artists although she is not a “pure” abstract painter. Her work is related to French Tachisme, American Abstract expressionism, and Surrealism, as were many of her contemporaries who were painting in Post-War Paris during the mid to late 1940s and early 1950s. Her paintings often resemble mazes, cities seen in profile or from high above or even library shelves in what seems to be an allegory to a never-ending search for Knowledge or the Absolute. Vieira da Silva has also created many prints, designs, for tapestries, ceramic decorations, and stained glass windows.
   
  She exhibited her work widely, winning a prize for painting at the São Paulo Art Biennial in São Paulo in 1961.
  In 1966-76 she made a stained-glass window for the Saint Jacques church in Reims together with Josef Sima. In 1974 she made the painting A Library Burning which uses many of the elements from that window.
  She decorated in 1988 the new Cidade Universitária subway station of Lisbon with azulejo panels.
  In November 1994, the Árpád Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation was inaugurated in Lisbon, a museum that displays a large collection of paintings by both artists.
caption: Árpád Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation, Lisbon
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