By Marina Bairrão Ruivo

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992), a painter of Portuguese origin, was born in Lisbon to a family that soon encouraged her interest in painting, reading and music. She was the only child of Marcos Vieira da Silva and Maria da Silva Graça.

At the end of the summer of 1913, after a two-month stay in England marked by the discovery of museums and Shakespeare's theater, Vieira recalls deciding to become a painter.

In Paris, he was dazzled by the hustle and bustle of the French capital during a period rich in the sharing of ideas by visual artists, writers, musicians and dancers. He also attended classes with Fernand Léger and Bissière during this phase of intense discovery and experimentation. In the summer of 1928, she made a study trip to Italy that would definitively mark her plastic research, and she was particularly impressed by Siena and pre-Renaissance painting. In 1930 she married the Hungarian painter Arpad Szenes (1897-1985).

In 1938, she left the Villa des Camélias - the couple's home since 1930 - and settled in the house-atelier on Boulevard Saint-Jacques, where she lived with Alberto Giacometti, Jean Lurçat, Jacques Lipchitz and Etienne Hajdu, among others. In 1939, under pressure from circumstances, she left Paris, leaving her work and studio in the care of Jeanne Bucher. After a short stay in Lisbon, where Vieira tried in vain to regain Portuguese nationality and have it granted to her husband, she left with Arpad for Brazil in 1940, where she stayed until 1947.

After the Brazilian critics' reservations, it was Paris' turn to see Vieira's work at the 1945 Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. The following year, Jeanne Bucher organized his first solo exhibition in New York at the Marian Williard Gallery. 1947 marked his return to Paris and the gradual recognition of his work, reinforced by the acquisition of La partie d'échecs by the French State in 1943 and the monograph dedicated to him in 1949 by Pierre Descargues, published by the Presses Littéraires de France in the "Artistes de ce Temps" collection.

The end of the decade was marked by Vieira and Arpad's deep involvement with their plastic research. They built a house-atelier on the rue de l'Abbé-Carton, where they moved in 1956, the year in which Vieira and Arpad obtained French nationality. The French government acquired his works and awarded him several decorations, the first in 1960(Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres).

Vieira da Silva won several international awards and exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1977, the EMI-Valentim de Carvalho gallery in 1984 and the 111 gallery in 1985. In 1983, Metropolitano de Lisboa commissioned him to decorate the Cidade Universitária station.

Vieira da Silva chose a work from 1940, Le Métro, to reproduce on tiles and collaborated with the painter Manuel Cargaleiro. In 1985 Arpad Szenes died. Vieira confesses that she understands her husband's painting better now, after his death, and takes up his painting again. In 1988, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's Modern Art Center and the Centre National des Arts Plastiques presented an important exhibition of her works in Lisbon and Paris. On that occasion, she was decorated by the Portuguese and French governments.

In 1989, Casa de Serralves in Porto organized an exhibition of works by Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes from Portuguese collections. In 1990, the Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation was created in Lisbon, and its museum, dedicated to the work of the two painters, was inaugurated in 1994. In 1991, at the painter's request, the Committee of the same name was founded in Paris. Vieira da Silva died on March 6, 1992, in Paris. The Catalogue Raisonné of her work was launched at the Foundation in the same year. A painter from the Second School of Paris, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva played a fundamental role in the international art scene.