The City

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The City

Artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (French, 1908-1992)

Place of OriginFrance

Date1951

DimensionsPainting: 37 1/4 × 32 1/4 in. (94.6 × 81.9 cm)
Frame: 38 1/2 × 53 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. (97.8 × 135.9 × 3.8 cm)

MediumOil on canvas.

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1953.134

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 07

Label Text“Everything amazes me. I paint my amazement, which at the same time is delight, fear and laughter. I do not want to exclude anything from this amazement. I want to paint pictures with many things, with all the contractions…” – Maria Helena Vieira da Silva In The City, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva composes a semi-abstract, complex, and labyrinthine architectural scene. A sense of deep space is developed through intersecting lines, overlapping shapes, and layered color. She took inspiration from the world around her, including the winding, crisscrossing streets of her native Lisbon, Portugal, and the horrors of war. The fragmented suggestion of buildings and streets is akin to reflections in broken shards of glass. After moving to Paris at the age of 19, Vieira da Silva studied painting under Fernand Léger. Her early work responded not only to Léger’s Cubist investigations into spatial representation, but also to the Modernist interest in the grid as a compositional structure (see, for example, a work by Piet Mondrian in Gallery 3) and Italian Futurists’ depictions of dynamic modern life (though she disavowed the Futurists’ association with fascism). In 1946, an exhibition of her work in New York drew the interest of artists who would go on to become Abstract Expressionists.Published ReferencesToledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo, 1976, p. 165, pl. 305.

Ocvirk, Otto G., et al., Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice, 3rd ed., Dubuque, 1975, p. 38, repr. fig. 40.

Goldstein, Nathan, Painting, Visual and Technical Fundamentals, Englewood Cliffs, 1979, p. 231, repr. fig. 6.33.

Vallier, Dora, Vieira da Silva, Paris, 1971, repr. p. 116.

Exhibition HistorySan Francisco Museum of Art, Art in the 20th Century, 1955, p. 18.

Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, School of Paris 1959: The Internationals, 1959, no. 68.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Paths of Abstract Art, 1960, no. 56, repr. p. 39.