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Portuguese-born painter, graphic artist, and designer who settled in Paris in 1928 and became a French citizen in 1956. She studied sculpture with *Bourdelle and *Despiau, then painting with *Bissière, *Friesz, and *Léger, and engraving with *Hayter. In 1930 she married the Hungarian painter Arpad Szènes (1900–84), who became her principal artistic mentor. In the mid-1930s she began to attract attention with pictures consisting of flecks of colour against a greyish or neutral background. These works, which evoke a sense of landscape, giving the impression of space without recourse to traditional devices of perspective, have something in common with Bissière's paintings, but Vieira da Silva's spiky linear organization is her own. From 1940 to 1947 she lived with her husband in Brazil, where her reputation grew.

Text source: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press)


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