Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
Composition
Date 1948
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 66 x 74 x 3.5 cm
Inventory ID UID 102-598
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This work belonged to Pierre Granville, the foremost collector of Vieira da Silva’s work. Between 1969 and 2006 Granville donated around a hundred works to the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon (along with pieces by Szenes, Hadju and de Staël), which thus obtained the largest public collection of this artist’s work. After facing much adversity during her time in Brazil, the painter regained her sense of calm by depicting these ‘spaces in the process of becoming spaces’. She would place small, squares coloured using shades from a limited palette against a neutral background, like the lights of a distant city at night. Black marks give a certain rhythm to the piece, and allow its treatment of the space to appear somewhat ambiguous. Vieira da Silva says, ‘I paint places, but always seen from far away. When you look at something from a distance, it appears indistinct. That’s what I try to paint, as though it were close up’ (Pierre Schneider, Les Dialogues du Louvre, Paris, 1972). AC
Pierre Granville, Paris; private collection; acquired at Sotheby’s, London, 26 March 1992.