Vieira da Silva retrospective opens at Venice’s Guggenheim
In 1943, Peggy Guggenheim included her in the landmark Exhibition by 31 Women - one of the first U.S. shows to feature exclusively women artists - alongside Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington.
A major retrospective dedicated to the pioneering modernist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva has opened at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
Titled Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space, the exhibition explores the complex and poetic visual language of the Portuguese-born French artist, whose work transformed pictorial space into abstract environments and optical illusions.
Curated by Flavia Frigeri, of the National Portrait Gallery in London, the show features around 70 works on loan from prestigious institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Fundação Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva in Lisbon.
The exhibition runs until September 15, 2025.
National treasure
Organized in collaboration with several international partners, the show marks a significant effort to reintroduce Vieira da Silva’s work to global audiences.
“She is a national treasure in Portugal and well known in France, but her legacy deserves renewed attention,” said Frigeri in an interview with The Art Newspaper.
The exhibition pays special attention to the artist’s seven-year exile in Rio de Janeiro during World War II, where she fled with her husband, Hungarian-Jewish painter Árpád Szenès.
Frigeri considers this Brazilian period among the most powerful in Vieira da Silva’s career, capturing what she describes as “the tragedy of humanity.”
Works from this time, she says, continue to resonate with the global conflicts of today.
Vieira da Silva’s international acclaim began taking root in the Americas during this period.
Notably, in 1943, Peggy Guggenheim included her in the landmark Exhibition by 31 Women - one of the first U.S. shows to feature exclusively women artists - alongside Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington.
The MAC/CCB museum in Lisbon is currently hosting the exhibition 31 Women. An Exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim, inspired by that founding moment until the end of June.
Her earlier work Composition (1936) had already caught the eye of Hilla Rebay, the first director of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York (precursor to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), who acquired it in 1937.
Bilbao exhibition
After its run in Venice, Anatomy of Space will travel to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, opening on October 17, 2025, and running until February 22, 2026.
The retrospective is part of a broader three-year internationalization initiative supported by institutions and scholars from Portugal, Brazil, France, the United States, and Morocco, among others.
According to António Gomes de Pinho, president of the Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation, the project is “a major step in bringing Portuguese culture and one of its greatest painters to a global stage.”