VIEIRA DA SILVA - PURE INSPIRATION

Last week I discovered the art of Vieira da Silva who was an Abstract Expressionist born in 1908 in Lisbon.  She studied sculpture at the Lisbon Academy of Fine Art and in Paris under Bourdelle but made her name as a painter; "I never contemplated becoming a sculptress; I created sculptures in order to remain more free in my painting".   She was exiled in Brazil during the Second World War and afterwards lived in Paris until her death in 1992.


Some of her early works are figurative in an almost Cubist style (Calvary and War, 1942) but gradually the figure disappeared to be replaced with webs of lines, coloured blocks and converging perspective.  Her later paintings are wonderfully coloured, geometric explorations of perspective and spatial dimensions, lines and blocks of colour and light that draw the eye in or lead it across the canvas.  She often painted urban themes and described herself as a "city woman".  


I love her work, especially from the mid 1940's onwards.  The paintings are incredibly detailed and seem alost multi-dimensional.  She way shes uses colour and line are for me, wonderful and the paintings have an energy and dynamism that I find exhilirating.  Here are a few examples, beginning with one of my favourites:-
 The Big Buildings, 1956, Paris Centre Georges Pompidou










 The Grey Room, 1950, Tate Gallery, London.



Library, 1949, Paris, Centre Georges Pompdiou


I would urge you to check out also Gare St Lazare, 1949 and Urban Perspectives, 1952.  In fact get this book





or visit this site http://www.jeanne-bucher.com/galerie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=37


You'll be inspired for years!