Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

Patrice Trigano, Paris
Sale: Christie's, Paris, Collection Patrice Trigano Itinéraire d'une Passion, 5 July 2005, Lot 274
Private Collection, France
Sale: Christie's, Paris, Art d'Après-Guerre et Contemporain, 31 May 2007, Lot 320
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Guy Weelen and Jean-François Jaeger, Vieira da Silva, Catalogue Raisonné, Geneva 1994, p. 587, no. 2953, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slight lighter in the original. Condition: There is light wear with associated loss in all four corners and intermittently along the lower extreme edge. There is further light wear to the centre of the left extreme edge. Upon extremely close inspection there are a few spots of minor superficial loss to the top layer of pigment, towards the centre of the top edge. Under raking light, very light canvas draw s apparent in the top left corner. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals a few spots of retouching on the extreme lower edge towards the right hand corner, and a further fine diagonal line of florescence towards the centre on the lower edge.
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Dark, mysterious and primal, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva's imaginative Le Theatre de Pirandello is an unsettling glimpse into a world of shifting shapes and ungraspable presence. Shimmering vermillion tiles blaze out of the darkness in which a figure seems to stand poised to enact a dream-like sequence. Above, in the lofty heights of this 'theatre' lies a prone figure, or perhaps a dreamscape city, suspended in a luminous light. To either side falling panes of colour close curtain-like over this surreal display.

 

The most celebrated artist to emerge from Portugal, Vieira da Silva spent almost all of her life in Paris, where she absorbed the influence of Cezanne and the earthy palette of Cubism into her complex compositions. An intuitive abstract style linked her to the French Taschism movement of the 1940s, while the use of spiralling, vertiginous perspectives clearly call to mind surrealists such as Giorgio de Chirico, whose influence is particularly evident in this dramatic, shadowy composition.

 

Drawing heavily on the Renaissance concept of Theatrum Mundi : the world as a stage, the present work  challenges our desire to see the real world reflected in front of us. We yearn to find coherent references in the dark void of the stage, to understand the complex world presented to us and yet comprehension remains tantalizingly out of reach. Indeed the discordant shapes that dominate this composition are the artist's desire to reflect the arbitrary and fragmented nature of human perception, throwing back at us a more 'real' reflection of our everyday vision.

 

The title of this work pays homage Luigi Pirandello an avant-garde Sicilian dramatist and author, whose work of the early 19^th century addressed themes of illusion and reality as well as the relativity of truth which Vieira da Silva clearly identified with. These themes manifest themselves throughout the artist's oeuvre in her ever-present tussle with spatial representation and of reconciling mankind's place in the modern world. Upheaval in her personal life also played a strong role in Vieira da Silva's artistic development: fleeing to Brazil at the onset of war with her partner, the Jewish Hungarian painter Arpad Szenes, she found that on her return her work was manifestly at odds with the prevailing style that had developed in post-war Paris. A testament to her vision and determined nature, Vieira da Silva persisted with her own unique perspective- driven abstraction. Her works became increasingly linked to her past, with flickering shapes of diamonds and squares that reference Portuguese azulejos, combined with metaphors of chessboards and card games. In this way the lone figures of Vieira da Silva's paintings reflect her own outsider status, and the hermetically sealed perspectives reflect a continued struggle to find her place in the world.