CAM loans five works by Vieira da Silva to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, housed in the collector’s former residence on the Grand Canal, features her personal collection and a sculpture garden, while also organising temporary exhibitions like ‘Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space’.
Opening to the public on 12 April and running until 15 September, this exhibition is curated by Flavia Frigeri, art historian and curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The exhibition holds particular significance as Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–1992) had a connection with Peggy Guggenheim – in 1943, she was one of the artists featured in ‘Exhibition by 31 Women’ at Guggenheim’s ‘Art of This Century’ gallery-museum in New York.
Bringing together around 70 works loaned from various international museums, the exhibition traces the evolution of Vieira da Silva’s visual language. References to Cubism and Futurism, as well as traditional Portuguese decorative motifs, are explored through this selection.
Among the featured works are five significant paintings from the CAM Collection, created between the 1930s and 1960s: La Rue, Le Soir; Le Héros ou Le Héraut; História Trágico-Marítima ou Naufrage; Personnages dans la rue; L’aire du vent. These pieces reflect Vieira da Silva’s mastery in creating optical illusions and blending figurative and abstract elements in imaginary spaces.
This opportunity for deeper artistic exploration will continue in the winter, when the exhibition travels to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.
Main image: Vieira da Silva, ‘Personnages dans la rue’, 1948. CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian Collection