Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Arpad Sizenes's Art

Last Monday, before heading to music theory, I went to a museum featuring artwork by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and her husband, Arpad Sizenes. She was the more famous artist, but his work was also amazing. They both developed modern art styles, but Viera’s paintings were alive, active with violent colors, while her husband’s work was more calm. He painted geometric cities and abstract seagulls and the sea, while she painted cities like swirling labyrinths and myths, like Orpheus, and burning libraries. Born in Portugal, she studied and lived in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. When she missed Lisbon, she painted it from memory. Sizenes, who was originally Hungarian, painted Budapest as a “City of Martyrs.”

Szenes

Vieira da Silva, "Biblioteque"

Vieira da Silva’s self portrait is black and grey, but Arpad's portraits of his wife are more colorful and lively.

My favorite painting by Vieira da Silva looked like a huge haunted house with tons of trap doors. A very rough translation of its French title (“Au Fur et à mesure”) is “as one goes along” or “gradually” as if one were winding her way through this dark labyrinth. My favorite piece by Sizenes was titled “Mermaids.” Even though it is abstract, you can almost see the mermaids. It seems as though they are swimming in the sky and the water is below them.

The museum also had a temporary exhibit of paintings by Mily Possoz, another Portuguese painter, who lived and worked abroad, befriended Vieira da Silva, and seemed to like depicting ladies and cats. My favorite, not the one below, also pictured a fancy lady sitting at the window with her cat in her lap.

I only brought home half of what I wanted from the gift shop—but that’s better than usual. I would have liked a print of that haunted house—instead, my mom bought me a book (not that I don’t like that). I looked through another book called Os Desastres de Sofia (The Disasters of Sofia), illustrated by Vieira da Silva.

Vieira da Silva, "L'issue lumineuse"

Here are a couple of my own illustrations, based on a recent reading of Grimm's fairytales: