Executed in 1940 and reworked in 1952, this work is double-sided.

Vieira da Silva left her hometown of Lisbon when she was twenty years old, and her upbringing in Portugal would remain an important anchor and influence throughout her career as an artist. When she and her husband were forced to flee Paris at the outbreak of World War II, they first stopped in Lisbon. She began her painting Lisbonne after leaving the city for Rio de Janeiro in late 1940, invoking a memory of her beloved city as the ravages of war moved across the continent and the futures of European capitals were thrown into peril. She kept the painting, returning to it in 1952 after she had returned to Paris. In this second campaign, she appears to have covered over portions of the cityscape with swaths of grey and dusty orange, perhaps referencing the transformations enacted upon the urban fabric of Europe during the war. The figure at the center of the composition – more prominent than her human figures usually appear – is herself composed of the city’s structures.