Vieira da Silva, Maria Elena

▪ French artist

Maria Elena also rendered  Marie-Hélène 

born June 13, 1908, Lisbon, Portugal

died March 6, 1992, Paris, France

      Portuguese-born French painter of intricate, semiabstract compositions.

      Vieira da Silva moved to Paris in 1928, where she studied sculpture first with Antoine Bourdelle (Bourdelle, Antoine) and later with Charles Despiau (Despiau, Charles). She studied painting with Fernand Léger (Léger, Fernand) and engraving with Stanley William Hayter (Hayter, Stanley William).

      Although the abstract patterning of Vieira da Silva's early paintings tended toward the decorative, in her mature work she combined highly detailed, complicated patterns with masterful spatial manipulations. She used checkered surfaces, luminous spots, and intersecting lines in her paintings to create imaginary architectural forms, as seen in the dreamlike cityscape Golden City (1956). She and her husband, the Hungarian artist Arpad Szenes, lived in Brazil during World War II. Vieira da Silva returned to Paris in 1947 and became a French citizen in 1956.

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