Work
By the late 1950s Vieira da Silva 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.
She exhibited her work widely, winning a prize for painting at the São Paulo Art Biennial in São Paulo in 1961.
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.
Her name sometimes appears written as Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, but the correct version, in Portuguese, is Maria Helena Vieira da Silva.
Read more about this topic: Maria Helena Vieira Da Silva
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Gustav Aschenbach was the writer who spoke for all those who work on the brink of exhaustion, who labor and are heavy-laden, who are worn out already but still stand upright, all those moralists of achievement who are slight of stature and scanty of resources, but who yet, by some ecstasy of the will and by wise husbandry, manage at least for a time to force their work into a semblance of greatness.”
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“Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.
Poet and sculptor, do the work,
Nor let the modish painter shirk”
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“Poets that lasting Marble seek
Must carve in Latine or in Greek,
We write in Sand, our Language grows,
And like the Tide our work o’erflows.”
—Edmund Waller (1606–1687)