Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

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Maria Helena Vieira da Silva [ ˈvi̯ɐi̯ɾɐ ðɐ ˈsilvɐ ] (French Marie-Hélène Vieira da Silva [ maˈʀi eˈlɛn vjeˈʀa dasilˈva ]; born  June 18, 1908 in Lisbon , †  March 6, 1992 in Paris ) was a Portuguese - French painter of abstract art and Graphic artist who gained international fame.

Life

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva came from a wealthy Portuguese family who supported her artistic inclinations from childhood. In Lisbon, Vieira studied at the Academia de Belas-Artes . In 1928 she went to Paris, where she studied sculpture under Antoine Bourdelle ( Académie de la Grande Chaumière ) and Charles Despiau ( Académie Scandinave ), but then, under the influence of Fernand Léger and Stanley William Hayters, began painting in 1929, whereupon from 1930 to In 1932 he studied with Léger and Roger Bissière at the Académie Ranson . In 1929 she met the Hungarian painter Arpad Szenès (1897–1985), whom she married in 1930. In 1930 she exhibited some of her paintings for the first time in Paris.

The artist lived in Paris (with the exception of 1940–1947, when she emigrated to Brazil ) and in 1956 took on French citizenship. She won prizes at the São Paulo Biennale in 1961 and was the first woman to win the French Grand Prix National des Arts in 1966. Almost all major European and American museums have acquired works by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva.

Fundação Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva, Lisbon

Her work is characterized by the use of a line grid that creates a spatial component in her abstract pictures.

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva was a participant in documenta 1 (1955), documenta II (1959) and also documenta III in 1964 in Kassel .

In 1979 she was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor . Among other awards, she was elected honorary member of the British Royal Academy of Arts in 1988. The crater Vieira da Silva on Mercury was named after her in 2013 .

art

From an early age, self-doubt, melancholy and fear of death were important themes in da Silva's work, with which she grappled until her death.

The early work is characterized by surrealistic , representational images with mythological references.

In Paris, the artist began a series of spatial representations. Room suites that seem hopeless , the walls and ceilings of which are covered with a partially distorted checkerboard pattern, nest and interlock in an unreal way. The representation of a large library is best known.

Over time, these pictures lost more and more their perspective and eventually became the flat, but no less deep, labyrinth pictures for which da Silva is known today. The viewer looks at a seemingly disordered network of lines and fields, wanders his eyes over the ridges, believes he recognizes rooms here and there and finally ends up in a prominent area of ​​bright light that appears like a breakthrough into another level.

The often melancholy artist saw death as a redeeming moment at the end of a life full of trials and tribulations, even longed for it and granted it an exposed position in her work. The older she herself got and the closer she saw her own death approaching, the lighter the labyrinth images became. The network of lines becomes thinner, breaks open and reveals the light behind.

In 1992, in the last hours before her death, da Silva painted a series of four pictures. In it she illustrates her encounter with death, depicted as a masked figure with a long robe, which is only hinted at in the iridescent painting style typical of da Silva and blends with the background. A look back shows once again the perspectives and room arrangements of the past life. In the last picture, the viewer stands directly on the threshold. Only a strip on the edge of the picture, like a door frame, shows that the last step has not yet been taken.

Works

  • As Bandeiras Vermelhas (1939, 80 × 140 cm);
  • História Trágico-Marítima (1944, 81.5 × 100 cm);
  • O Passeante Invisível (1949–1951, 132 × 168 cm);
  • O Quarto Cinzento ( Gray Room , 1950, Tate Gallery, London, 65 × 92 cm);
  • Composition (1952, Kunstmuseum Bern, 33 × 41 cm)
  • Elevated Railway , 1955
  • L'Allée Urichante (1955, 81 × 100 cm);
  • Les Grandes Constructions (1956, 136 × 156.5 cm);
  • Londres ( London , 1959, 162 × 146 cm);
  • Landgrave (1966, 113.6 x 161 cm);
  • Bibliothèque en Feu (1974, 158 × 178 cm);

exhibition

literature

  • Vieira da Silva , exhibition catalog Kestner Society, Hanover 1958 with an introduction by Werner Schmalenbach
  • Gerd Presler: Lines in front of the light: Vieira da Silva , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin, June 16, 1988, issue 433, pp. 48–52.
  • Gisela Rosenthal; Vieira de Silva 1908-1992. In search of the unknown space . Cologne, Taschen, 1998.

Web links

Commons : Maria Helena Vieira da Silva  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography of Fundação Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva in Lisbon , accessed on April 21, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Vieira da Silva, Maria Helena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vieira da Silva, Marie-Hélène (French); Viera da Silva, Maria Elena (French misspellings)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese-French painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Lisbon , Portugal
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1992
Place of death Paris , France