Vieira da Silva; the 31 Women number Twenty-Eight, her birthday is 13 June.

born 13 June 1908 in Lisbon, Portugal, died 6 March 1992                                  

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.

Leonora Carrington; the Celtic Surrealist



Book cover with cut-out showing detail of "Three Women With Crows."

This mysterious book is a handsome, well illustrated and knowledgeable (if slightly expensive) catalogue for an amazing exhibition which I made a trip from Yorkshire to Dublin in December 2013 especially to see. Leonora Carrington was a British artist who spent almost the whole of her career Mexico. She is one of the 31 Women; I try to catch as many exhibitions as possible containing their work.

The Dublin exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art was probably my only chance to see so much of Carrington's work in one place, most is on the other side of the Atlantic. I couldn't miss this huge retrospective of one of my favourites. It was wonderful to have free access to the three floors in IMMA's garden gallery and enjoy her boundless imagination in over 50 paintings, plus drawings, books, sculpture and tapestries by Leonora Carrington. Most of this work I had never seen before and much I hadn't even seen illustrated. With so much to see, I visited the exhibition on two successive days, would have liked to go back, but we had a flight to catch!

Tapestry "Iguana and Fox" with sculpture "Albino Hogg."

Carrington's extraordinary work is incomprehensibly underrated in the UK, though she is one of only a few British women artists whose work can fetch over one million pounds. She was a magical, mysterious and sometime surrealist painter, illustrator, writer and in her later years a sculptor. Her work is not to be confused with the more conventional and tasteful portrait paintings of another Carrington - no relation - who was a member of the Bloomsbury set.  Leonora could only be described as a conventional artist because she used the more conventional medium of paint, rather than installation or performance art.

Was my trip to Dublin worth it? Definitely! The exhibition was suitably marvellous and even without the exhibition, I hadn't been to Dublin for 25 years. Despite the recent recession, it's still a lively and immensely charming city. We stayed in the George Frederic Handel Hotel, on the site of the Great Music Hall on the wonderfully named Fishamble Street, where Handel's 'Messiah' was first performed in 1742. Hallelujah!

 Was the catalogue worth the money (45 Euro)? Yes, it gives fascinating insights into the work of this fascinating artist, including an interview by Hans Ulrich-Obrist and comment by her son, Gabriel Weisz-Carrington. I will look at this book again and again.                                                                                                                                                                 *

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17991730-leonora-carrington
https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389575610m/17991730.jpg
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17991730-leonora-carrington">Leonora
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26359.Leonora_Carrington">Leonora

European Elections, 22 May

This is a post aimed at any UK readers of this blog, apologies to the rest of the world for being boring!
Are you registered to vote in the European elections? You can register up to 6th May so it's not too late. And polling day is Thursday 22 May. If you can't be bothered, just remember that Ukip can be bothered and they are very good at getting all their supporters to the polls. That's how they gained thirteen European MEP's last time. Yes I did say thirteen! The UK only has 73 Euro MP's and Ukip are expected to do even better this time. The EU can affect policies on human rights, animal rights, consumer rights, the environment, international trade, economic development, workers' rights etc. Why should we care? Well, do you really want the ukips to represent your views on those matters? I know I don't.

Aline Meyer Liebman; The 31 Women Number Twenty Seven was born in 1879.

Aline Meyer Liebman 1879-1966. American painter, photographer, collector and patron.

Aline Meyer Liebman
(photograph from the cover of
her daughter's book)

At 64, Aline Meyer Liebman was the oldest of the artists who exhibited at the Exhibition by 31 Women. As an artist, she is unknown. Like Peggy Guggenheim, Aline’s main importance was as a dedicated collector and patron of artists and galleries. A number of other wealthy American women were keen supporters of modern art during its eatly years, including Katherine Dreier, Florine Stettheimer and Louise Arensberg. Aline Meyer was the earliest, beginning her collecting before 1900 and continuing to support modern art, particularly photography, for more than sixty years.

Aline recorded in her diary on 11 December1942, that Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim visited her studio to choose a painting for the forthcoming Exhibition by 31 Women. This was unusual, Ernst is usually said to have visited the women artists alone and although Peggy and Aline probably knew each other, there is no indication that they were more than acquaintances. Also unusual was this particular artist's reluctance to lend the pictures they wanted.

Barbara Poe-Levee (Reis), the 31 Women number Twenty Six. Her Birthday is 4th March.

Barbara Reis 4 March 1922 - 13 Sept 2013  -                    

    Later known as Barbara Poe-Levee – American painter and collector.

 


Barbara Poe Levee at 88

Barbara Reis was born in New York City in 1922 and was almost destined to be an artist. Her parents were amongst the NY cognoscenti who, in the early 1940’s, welcomed exiled European artists fleeing the War in their homelands. Her mother Rebecca was a painter, her father Bernard’s profession was as an accountant but both were keen collectors of modern art, an enthusiasm that Barbara followed them into. The family had travelled in Europe during the 1930’s and Barbara was educated at a Rudolph Steiner School in New York, the Tyler School of Fine Arts, Philadelphia and the Ecole Internationale, Geneva, Switzerland.

The Reises befriended Peggy Guggenheim in around 1940 and while their parents attended each other’s parties and soirees, Barbara became friends with fellow painter Pegeen Vail, Peggy Guggenheim’s daughter by her first marriage to writer and artist Lawrence Vail. Barbara’s first contact, as an impressionable teenager, with the European artists, especially the Surrealists, made a lasting impact on her as an artist.  Her other friends in the 1940’s included artists Luchita Hurtado, Anne Alpert, Matta, Wolfgang Paalen and Robert Motherwell.

Shelfies - How many books do you own?

 

 

This 'shelfie' shows just a few of the books I've acquired since I started the 31 Women Project.
 
I know which books I have, roughly, but I probably ought to catalogue them all properly.

National Libraries Day. But do you support your local library? Do I?

Today is national libraries day. Every day seems to be national something-or-other day, I usually ignore them, but this one struck chord, and not a comfortable one. I last visited my local library almost a year ago, which is too long. And that was just to borrow a travel guide to take on holiday to Crete because I didn't want to entrust my laptop to the kindly carefulness of baggage handlers.

I like to tell myself I live in the wrong place. If the local library was within walking distance of my home, I'd go every week. That's what I tell myself because I used to live within easy walking distance of out local library in Stony Stratford, but that was almost two decades ago. When we first moved there, the library was tiny, housed in a little Victorian gothic building which had originally been the fire station. The rise of the new town of Milton Keynes led to Stony Stratford being given a larger modern library and I visited twice weekly and introduced my three children to the joys of libraries, all before they were two years old.

But the children grew up, we moved and my tastes changed. Today I read less fiction and I mostly need academic libraries for my research, and I buy books from bookshops, rather than borrowing them. I admit to also buying books online, but from Abebooks rather than Amazon. And my favourite bookshop is the Oxfam bookshop in the town centre. I probably own as many books as some small libraries.