The Anatomy of space

“I like to paint space.” Vieira da Silva’s passing remark holds the keys to her work, which is largely predicated on the representation of space, real and imagined. Two episodes early in her career led her on a lifelong pursuit of space. The first was an anatomy course for students of the Escola de Belas Artes, which she attended while still living in Lisbon in 1926. The study of human bones informed her earliest experiments with abstraction. Paintings like Composition (1936) and Composition (1936) are centered on a series of skeletal forms that can be described as anatomical studies of space. The second meaningful episode was the encounter with the transporter bridge in the old port of Marseille in 1931. The lightness of this architectural structure with its suspended cables influenced her perception of space as a fluid and untethered form. In a nod to the impact that Marseille’s architectural novelty had on her, Vieira da Silva painted White Marseille (1931) representing a wooden scaffolding in close proximity of a housing complex. She explained: “I think there’s a kind of plastic intelligence in me that’s perhaps stronger than other traits of my nature.”