Composition

1936–37

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
French, born Portugal, 1908–1992

“When I paint a landscape or a seascape,” Maria Helena Vieira da Silva once said, “I’m not very sure if it’s a landscape or a seascape. It’s a thought form rather than a realistic form.” Vieira da Silva’s path to this personal type of painting began in 1928, when she left her native Portugal for Paris. She worked with such artists as Fernand Léger and quickly began to incorporate abstraction into her work. Looking to the work of Joaquín Torres García and Pierre Bonnard, as well as the azulejos (floor and wall tiles) from her native Portugal, she developed a distinct style that balances between the organic and familiar, the hermetic and strange.

Status: On View, Gallery 398
Department: Modern Art

Artist: Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
Title: Composition
Place: Jersey (Artist's nationality)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1936–1937
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: none
Dimensions: 81.6 × 100.7 cm (32 1/8 × 39 5/8 in.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Maxine Kunstadter
Reference Number: 1978.404
Copyright: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

A. James Speyer and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth-Century European Paintings (Chicago, 1980), p. 74, pl. 4B11.

Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft, Vieira da Silva, March 29–May 11, 1958, no. 8a; traveled to: Wuppertal, Kunst-und Museumsverein, June 1–June 29, 1958, no. 3; and Bremen, Kunsthalle, July-August 1958, n.p., no. 8a, as Ohne Titel.London, Gimpel Fils Gallery Ltd., Collectors Choice XIV, July-August 1958, n.p. (ill.), no. 48.

Julian Trevelyan, London, purchased directly from artist [letter November 27, 2001 from René Gimpel and copy of Gimpel Fils stock card in curatorial file]. R. Phillips, London, by 1956 [letter mentioned above]; sold to Gimpel Fils Gallery Ltd., London, by 1956 to June 1968 [letter mentioned above]; sold to Sigmund and Maxine Kunstadter, Chicago, June 1968–1978 [letter mentioned above and Gimpel Fils stock card]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1978.

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