Vieira da Silva was a Portugese female painter, who created work which is, in my opinion, exquisite. Her forms are both architectural and organic, and have a distinctly futuristic feel. I discovered her work in a book on 20th century painting that I picked up at a yard sale recently, and began to research her online:
Vieira da Silva “Las Grandes Constructions” (1956)
At the age of eleven she had begun seriously studying drawing and painting at that city’s Academia de Belas-Artes. In her teen years she studied painting with Fernand Léger, sculpture with Antoine Bourdelle, and engraving with Stanley William Hayter, all masters in their respective fields. She also created textile designs.
By the late 1950s Vieira da Silva was internationally known for her dense and complex compositions, influenced by the art of Paul Cézanne and the fragmented forms, spatial ambiguities, and restricted palette of cubism and abstract art. She is considered to be one of the most important Post-War abstract artists however she is not a “pure” abstract painter. Her work is related to French Tachisme, American Abstract expressionism, and Surrealism — as were many of her contemporaries who were painting in Post-War Paris during the mid to late 1940s and early 1950s. Her paintings often resemble mazes, cities seen in profile or from high above or even library shelves in what seems to be an allegory to a never-ending search for Knowledge or the Absolute.(Source: Wikipedia)