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Artworks
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva
Sans titre, 1955Signed 'Vieira da Silva' and dated '55' (lower right)Oil on canvas60 by 73 cm (23⅝ by 28¾ in.)61740© 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, ParisFurther images
Painted in 1955. In Sans Titre, Vieira da Silva focused on the gesture of the brushstroke while maintaining her signature matrix. The geometry of squares and floating lines is challenged...Painted in 1955.
In Sans Titre, Vieira da Silva focused on the gesture of the brushstroke while maintaining her signature matrix. The geometry of squares and floating lines is challenged by the freedom and abstraction of her vibrant red, blue and yellow palette. The floating lines in Sans Titre resemble a network of paths—a recurring motif in the artist’s oeuvre. In this instance, the paths in Sans Titre prohibit the viewer from fixating on any individual point in her labyrinth. Both in the present work, as well as her 1953 composition Untitled, currently in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection in New York, Vieira da Silva layered her geometric web to create multivalent vanishing points. Paul Cézanne, a major influence on the artist, employed a similar color palette and approach to fragmented form in his late watercolors, such as Rochers près des grottes au-dessus de Château Noir. In Sans Titre, Vieira da Silva looked to Cézanne as she highlighted the underlying structure of her abstract cubic spaces through abbreviated strokes.
Music Credit: Claire de Lune by Laura Sullivan
Provenance
Private Collection, FranceExhibitions
London, Waddington Custot, Invisible Cities: Architecture of Line, 2018, no. 14, illustrated
Paris, Jeanne Bucher Jaeger; London, Waddington Custot and New York, Di Donna Galleries, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, 2019-20, illustrated in color pp. 66-67
Literature
G. Weelen and J.-F. Jaeger, Vieira da Silva: Catalogue Raisonné, Geneva, 1994, no. 1270, illustrated p. 2511of 6
