Maria Helena VIEIRA DA SILVA

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Life, Original Lithographs and Etchings

Few painters have given space itself such a recognisable signature as Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992). Born in Lisbon and resident in Paris from 1928, the Portuguese-born artist became a leading figure of the School of Paris and Lyrical Abstraction. Her canvases are woven from chequerboards, grids and receding lines that suggest libraries, cities, railway stations and labyrinths without ever quite depicting them. A trained engraver from 1929 onwards, she was also a prolific and subtle printmaker, and in 1966 she became the first woman to receive France’s Grand Prix National des Arts.

At Le Coin des Arts, our Paris gallery, we offer pencil-signed original lithographs by Vieira da Silva, chosen for the quality of the impression, their provenance and their condition, including sheets published by Galerie Ernst Beyeler in Basel, by Erker in St Gallen and by Éditions Regards for Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Élégies majeures.

Lisbon beginnings

She was born on 13 June 1908 in Lisbon, the only child of a diplomat, who died in a Swiss sanatorium in 1911. Raised by her mother in her grandfather’s book-filled house, she travelled widely as a child. Between 1919 and 1927 she studied drawing and painting in Lisbon, notably with Emília Santos Braga and Armando Lucena, as well as modelling, and resolved early on that her future lay in Paris.

An apprenticeship in Montparnasse

Arriving in Paris with her mother in 1928, she first studied sculpture under Antoine Bourdelle at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she met the Hungarian painter Árpád Szenes. In 1929 she worked with Charles Despiau at the Académie Scandinave, then turned to painting with Charles Dufresne, Henry de Waroquier and Othon Friesz, and attended classes given by Fernand Léger. Sculpture was abandoned for good.

That same year she learnt engraving in the studio of the English printmaker Stanley William Hayter – the workshop later known as Atelier 17 – where the incised line became a tool for building space. She married Szenes on 22 February 1930, thereby losing her Portuguese nationality. From 1932 the dealer Jeanne Bucher championed her work, and she studied with Roger Bissière at the Académie Ranson. Galerie Jeanne Bucher published Kô et Kô, a children’s book by Pierre Guéguen that she illustrated, in 1933, and gave her solo shows in 1936 and 1937.

War years in Rio de Janeiro

When war broke out the couple spent around a year in Portugal (1939), but were refused Portuguese nationality and sailed in 1940 for Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil she painted sombre works such as L’Incendie I (1944), showing at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio in 1942 and at Galeria Askanazy in 1944. In 1943 Peggy Guggenheim included her in Exhibition by 31 Women at Art of This Century in New York. She returned alone to Paris in March 1947; Szenes followed. The dealer Pierre Loeb took her up at once and showed her at Galerie Pierre in 1949, 1951 and 1955.

International renown – and a British audience

British collectors discovered her early: she had a solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, London, in 1952, followed by another at the Hanover Gallery in 1957. The Tate collection holds three of her paintings, The Tiled Room (1935), The Corridor (1950) and Paris (1951). Elsewhere, she showed at the Venice Biennale of 1954, won the University of Basel tapestry competition that year, took third prize at the Caracas Biennial in 1955 and took part in documenta II in Kassel in 1959.

She and Szenes became French citizens in 1956. Honours followed: the International Grand Prize for painting at the São Paulo Biennial in 1961, Commander of Arts and Letters in 1962 and, in 1966, the Grand Prix National des Arts. The Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris mounted a retrospective in 1969, following the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Stained glass, tiles and a lasting legacy

From 1966, with the painter Joseph Sima, she designed stained-glass windows for the Church of Saint-Jacques in Reims, the first installed in 1968. She also produced tapestry cartoons and the azulejo tile panels of Cidade Universitária station on the Lisbon Metro, opened in 1988 – the year her eightieth birthday was marked by retrospectives at the Grand Palais in Paris and the Gulbenkian in Lisbon.

Szenes died in 1985; Vieira da Silva died in Paris on 6 March 1992 and is buried at Yèvre-le-Châtel. The Árpád Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation opened in Lisbon on 4 November 1994. Interest in Britain remains strong: a 2019-2020 survey travelled to Waddington Custot in London, and in 2023 her work featured in Action, Gesture, Paint at the Whitechapel Gallery. In 2025 the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Guggenheim Bilbao staged Anatomy of Space.

The printmaker: etching, engraving and colour lithography

Printmaking ran through six decades of her career. Her intaglio prints – burin engravings, etchings and aquatints – echo the fine lattice of her paintings: she cut twenty-five burin engravings for René Char’s L’Inclémence lointaine (Pierre Berès, 1961), and in 1975 made seven sugar-lift aquatint portraits for Char’s Sept portraits, printed by Claude Manesse.

Lithography gave her translucent veils of colour and scattered points of light. Galerie Jeanne Bucher showed her lithographs, gouaches on lithographic grounds and a screenprint in 1971. The 1970s were especially productive, with lithographs published by Galerie Beyeler in Basel, by Erker in St Gallen (including Jean Cassou’s Vingt-deux poèmes) and by Éditions Regards for Senghor’s Élégies majeures, printed at the Bellini workshop.

Illustrated books and reference catalogues

An avid reader, she illustrated many livres d’artiste, from Kô et Kô (1933) and Marie-Catherine Bazaine’s Et puis voilà (1951) to texts by René Char, Plato’s Symposium (1972) and Senghor, and engraved a portrait of André Malraux (1974). Some lithographs offered as single sheets come from these books and their deluxe copies.

The catalogue raisonné of her paintings and drawings, by Guy Weelen and Jean-François Jaeger, was published by Skira in 1994. For the prints, dealers usually refer to Vieira da Silva, obra gráfica 1933-1991 (Tomar, 1993), based on the Gérard A. Schreiner collection and cited as “Schreiner no.”.

Buying a Vieira da Silva original print: what to look for

Technique – lithograph, burin engraving, etching, aquatint or screenprint. Print run – most sheets are numbered (for instance 54/190); artist’s proofs, hors commerce impressions and unnumbered deluxe copies from illustrated books also exist (see the printing). Signature – impressions are normally pencil-signed. Then check the catalogue reference, publisher and printer, provenance and condition: paper (Arches, wove), absence of light-staining, and freshness of colour, particularly once a sheet has spent years in a mount and frame.

Original print or reproduction? Her paintings have been widely reproduced as exhibition posters and offset prints. An original print is conceived by the artist for the printing process, pulled under her supervision and signed; a poster usually carries lettering and is neither numbered nor signed by hand.

Le Coin des Arts selects Vieira da Silva’s original prints with care for their authenticity, provenance and condition, supplies a certificate with each work and can advise on framing. You may also enjoy the work of Roger Bissière, Jean Bazaine, Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Staël and Anna-Eva Bergman.

Sources and references

Fundação Árpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva, Lisbon · Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, artist biography · Tate · Wikipedia · Guy Weelen and Jean-François Jaeger, Vieira da Silva: catalogue raisonné, Skira, Geneva, 1994 · Vieira da Silva, obra gráfica 1933-1991, Gérard A. Schreiner collection, Tomar, 1993.