Maria Elena Vieira da Silva

Maria Elena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992) is a Portuguese-French abstractionist painter.

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Vieira da Silva was born on June 13, 1908 in Lisbon, Portugal. At the age of eleven she had began seriously studying drawing and painting at that city's Academia de Belas-Artes. In her teen years she studied painting with Fernand Léger, sculpture with Antoine Bourdelle, and engraving with Stanley William Hayter, all masters in their respective fields. She also created textile designs.

Related Topics:
Lisbon - Portugal - Painting - Fernand Léger - Sculpture - Antoine Bourdelle - Engraving - Stanley William Hayter

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By 1930 Vieira da Silva was exhibiting her paintings in Paris; that same year she married the Hungarian painter Árpád Szenes. Aside from a brief sojourn back in Lisbon and a period spent in Brazil during World War II, Vieira da Silva lived and worked in Paris all her life.

Related Topics:
Paris - Hungarian - Árpád Szenes - Brazil - World War II

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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. She exhibited her work widely, winning a prize for painting at the Biennial in São Paulo in 1961.

Related Topics:
Paul Cézanne - Cubism - Biennial - São Paulo

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Vieira da Silva was received the French government's Grand Prix National des Arts in 1966, the first woman so honored. She was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1979.

Related Topics:
Chevalier - Legion of Honor

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She died in Paris, France on March 6, 1992.

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