‘Born in Lisbon into a wealthy and influential family, Vieira da Silva came into contact with all the arts from a very young age. Books, music and art played an important role in shaping her cultural and visual frame of reference. As an only child and, moreover, educated at home, she also experienced many hours of solitude: “I never had the opportunity to meet other children... sometimes I was completely alone; sometimes I was sad, even very sad. I took refuge in the world of colours, in the world of sounds. I believe that all these influences merged into a single entity within me”. The solitary nature of her upbringing helped her develop her inner vision and certainly contributed to making her a very reserved adult.
Despite the loneliness that sometimes bordered on sadness, Vieira da Silva thrived on the education provided solely by her family, which supported and encouraged her from an early age to cultivate her remarkable artistic talent, and whose frequent travels helped her to broaden her horizons and imagination. It was during one of these journeys that her desire to become a painter took hold. “What convinced me to paint was the great emotion I felt at the age of five when I visited the National Gallery with my parents”. In January 1928, at the age of nineteen, she turned her passion for art into a profession. She left Lisbon and moved to Paris with her mother. [...] Paris not only offered Vieira da Silva an independent artistic education that was not readily available in Lisbon, but also immersed her in the reality of the avant-garde, which she had previously only experienced from afar. Her discovery of the work of Picasso, and, even more so, of the colours of Henri Matisse, the perspective of Pierre Bonnard and the subjects and pictorial architecture of Paul Cézanne, prompted her to seek something that seemed elusive at the time and that only a few years later would materialise in a highly personal abstract language.’
Flavia Frigieri, excerpt from Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of a Space, from the catalogue of the same name, Marsilio Arte, Venice 2025.
This is how Frigieri, art historian and curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London, introduces us to Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, celebrated in a major retrospective at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
The spaces of Palazzo Venier play host to some seventy works tracing Vieira da Silva’s career between the 1930s and 1980s. In particular, the exhibition explores her interest in architectural spaces.
The exhibition aims to free the artist from her association with Informal art, placing greater emphasis on her personal experiences, particularly in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. The artist moved to the French capital in the late 1920s, where she studied and began her career. She fled to Brazil with her husband Arpad Szenes during the Second World War, returning to France only after the conflict ended.
The exhibition begins with her relationship with her husband, represented in mutual portraits that demonstrate their personal and artistic relationship. The section dedicated to her studio is also significant, with many paintings from the 1930s. Moving on, we encounter dancers and chess players, as well as a large section dedicated to the difficult period of the war and her exile in Brazil.
Anatomy of a Space also highlights the stylistic shift that coincided with her return to Paris after the war: the forms became increasingly labyrinthine and abstract, the gaze turned to real and imaginary urban landscapes, in search of an atmosphere, a sensation, rather than a representation close to reality. Hers is a broad reflection on interior and exterior spaces, in which public architecture is also very present – construction sites, stations, churches.
The exhibition presents an opportunity to learn more about this artist who won over Peggy Guggenheim: in 1943, Peggy wanted her to be part of her New York show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery. And before this, Vieira da Silva also drew the attention of Hilla Rebay, director of the future Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, who purchased her Composition (1936) in 1937.
The exhibition is hosted at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection until 15 September.
Exhibition setup ph. Matteo De Fina; period pictures © Willy Maywald, courtesy Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Paris-Lisbon