born 13 June 1908 in Lisbon, Portugal, died 6 March 1992
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| Vieira da Silva working on stained glass, C1966 |
Portuguese/French painter, abstraction, mosaic, murals,
tapestry, stained glass
Maria Elena Vieira da Silva
is an unfamiliar name to many in the English speaking art world but this lack of
recognition is completely undeserved. She was Portuguese by birth, though her
career is mainly identified with the School of Paris and her work is
highly regarded throughout Europe, especially in France and Portugal and also
in Brazil. She has had a large number of exhibitions both in Europe and Latin
America. In a sixty year painting career she exhibited almost every year,
beginning in a joint exhibition with Hungarian painter Arpad Szenes, in Lisbon
in 1929 and with her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1933.
Szenes became her husband in
1930 and was possibly the only example in the twentieth century of a male artist
suborning his own talent in favour of his wife’s. Although they
exhibited together, he promoted her work ahead of his own, effectively acting
as her manager. She was naturally shy and reclusive and he protected her from day to
day worries, whilst introducing her work to the outside world. Most importantly,
he was able to dispel much of the self doubt that often struck her down; she
was constantly concerned that her increasingly abstract interpretations of time
and place were becoming de-humanised and hence devalued, though their creation actually involved a huge emotional commitment from the artist.
