GUGGENHEIM BILBAO RECLAIMS THE FIGURE OF VIEIRA DA SILVA
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao presents Anatomy of Space, an extensive exhibition dedicated to Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (Lisbon, Portugal, 1908 – Paris, France, 1992), which primarily encompasses her production from the 1930s through the 1980s. The exhibition is structured around two fundamental axes: architecture and the architectural landscape as compositional frameworks, and memory as the generator of the image.
The biographical span covered by this comprehensive survey is reflected in the selection of works that highlight her training in painting and drawing in Paris, her period of refuge in Rio de Janeiro during the Second World War, and her return to the French capital in 1947. Her production bears witness to an evolutionary process within her imagery, positioned midway between abstraction and figuration, where real and imagined spaces converge.
Vieira da Silva’s body of work constitutes a meeting ground of grids, geometries, and varied perspectives, the product of her exposure to visual references such as Hispano-Arabic tiles, the hallmarks of prevailing avant-garde movements such as Futurism or Cubism, and the chromatic impact of Pierre Bonnard. The ordering of these elements creates a recognizable language within a production in which process and the open interpretation of pictorial practice hold particular significance.
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Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. The Card Game (Le Jeu de cartes), 1937. Oil and graphite on canvas, 73 x 92 cm. Private collection, France-Portugal. Courtesy Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Paris-Lisbon. © María Helena Vieira da Silva, VEGAP, Bilbao 2025
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MARIA HELENA VIEIRA DA SILVA. L'arène (The arena), 1950. Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm. Private Collection, Portugal. Courtesy Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Paris-Lisbonne. María Helena Vieira da Silva, VEGAP, Bilbao 2025
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Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. La Scala or The Eyes (La Scala ou Les Yeux), 1937. Oil on canvas, 60 x 92 cm. Courtesy Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Paris-Lisbon. © María Helena Vieira da Silva, VEGAP, Bilbao 2025
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Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. The City (La Ville), 1950–51. Oil on canvas, 97.3 x 129.4 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman. © María Helena Vieira da Silva, VEGAP, Bilbao 2025
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Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. Tragic Maritime Story or Shipwreck (História trágico marítima ou Naufrage), 1944. Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 100 cm. CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon. © María Helena Vieira da Silva, VEGAP, Bilbao 2025
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. Anatomy of Space can be viewed until February 22 at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Abandoibarra, 2, Bilbao (Spain).
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