Individual exhibition dedicated to works by painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (Lisbon, Portugal, 1908 - Paris, France, 1992) in Brazil, organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's Modern Art Centre (CAM) on the occasion of the official visit by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Mário Soares (1924-2017) to the country.
The exhibition was an opportunity to disseminate the Portuguese-born and later naturalised French painter's work among the Brazilian public. She had lived in Rio de Janeiro with her husband, painter Arpad Szenes (1897-1985), during her seven years in exile (1940-1947).
The exhibition plan included two solutions suggested by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG) president to the Board of Administration for their consideration: the first established that the range of works included would be limited only to works found in Portugal; the second would include a wider range of pieces that included works in Portuguese collections located in other countries (Note by the Modern Art Centre, 4 Mar. 1987, Gulbenkian Archives, CAM 00122).
The exhibition, curated by CAM director José Sommer Ribeiro (1924-2006) and supported by gallery owner and collector Manuel de Brito (1928-2005) was shown on the second floor of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) and included a representation of 50 works by Vieira da Silva, some made during her time in exile in Brazil, belonging to Portuguese collections, such as the Jorge de Brito collection, which lent 33 pieces for the exhibition, 18 of which were held in his repository in Zurich. Jorge de Brito (1927-2006) was one of the greatest Portuguese art collectors of the 20th century and also the owner of the largest private collection of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva's works, acquired since the end of the 1960s.
As well as this private collection, pieces were also loaned from the CAM collection now known as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's Modern Collection and the collections of the Lisbon Metro, Galeria 111 and João Marques Pinto, as well as collectors from Porto who wished to remain anonymous and were loaned through mediation by the Galeria Nasoni.
In the preface to the exhibition catalogue, the curator explained that the event was not intended to be a retrospective of the painter's work and sought only to reveal the quality of these works from Portuguese private and institutional collections. In an internal memo to the FCG president, José Sommer Ribeiro gave the reasons that made it impossible to put on an exhaustive exhibition of Vieira da Silva's work: there were not enough pieces in Portugal to provide a sufficiently complete retrospective and there were space limitations imposed by the exhibition area (ibid.).
As stated by the chairman of the managing board of the Lisbon Metro, José Manuel Pestana Basto, the welcome the initiative received from collectors was a result of the understanding that Vieira da Silva's work was too important as national and world heritage to remain hidden away in private collections (Letter sent to the MAC director, 13 Mar. 1987, Gulbenkian Archives, CAM 00122).
The timeline of the works began with the period when the artist lived in Brazil and ran up to the 1980s. Although some important pieces from Vieira da Silva's artistic career were included, the curator also attempted to include some landmark pieces from more recent periods, especially the 1980s; nonetheless, these efforts did not yield results.
The initiative was praised by the Brazilian press and was considered one of the major high points of the President of the Portuguese Republic's visit and a beautiful sample of the [artist's] career (Galvão, Veja, 8 Apr. 1987, p.128). João Cândido Galvão concluded that, of the pieces shown, two important facts stood out: Vieira da Silva's consistency and formal accuracy (ibid.). The exhibition's effects were also mentioned by several critics.
Despite this warm welcome, some less favourable critiques were made of the way the exhibition was set up. In Reynaldo Roels Jr.'s words: Unfortunately, the set-up of the exhibition is sadly precarious. The path through the exhibition, lacking any kind of rationale or chronology, is simply a corridor leading from the wall of the lift on the second floor (on the first, there is a much less important exhibition that could have been sacrificed for the Portuguese artist). (...) Ideally, the exhibition would be entirely reorganised, as it appears to have been defined in advance by the limitations of the famous and poorly-viewed glass panels at the MASP than by the demands of education or museology (Roels Jr., Jornal do Brasil, 14 Apr. 1987, p. 7).
Generally speaking, critical reception of the exhibition sought to contextualise the importance of Vieira da Silva's work in international art fields and movements, but also its influence and repercussions for Brazilian art (Aguillar, Folha de São Paulo, 1 Apr. 1987).
In the same way, the text introducing Vieira da Silva's career, written by José Sommer Ribeiro and included in the catalogue, included some lesser known information about the period the artist and her husband spent living in Rio de Janeiro and the contact they retained with some Brazilian artists (Vieira da Silva nas Colecções Portuguesas, 1987).
Two years later, it was the Casa de Serralves' turn to organise an exhibition-homage in Porto that also sought to include Vieira da Silva's pieces in Portuguese collections, as well as those of her husband, painter Arpad Szenes (1897-1985), the plans for which were monitored by José Sommer Ribeiro and included loans of some pieces from the CAM's collection (Vieira da Silva e Arpad Szenes nas Colecções Portuguesas, 1989).
Two years later, the CAM organised another, wider exhibition of Vieira da Silva's works that belonged to Portuguese collections, including it in the actions for Europalia Portugal 1991 in Brussels (see Vieira da Silva dans les Collections Portugaises, 1991).