Maria
Helena
Vieira
da
Silva
Helena
Vieira
da
Silva
Menez
Lisboa, 1926 – Lisboa, 1995
As a self-taught artist Menez painted as she had learned: as part of a lone journey. Her work is a soliloquy, an enigmatic eternal conversation with herself that the observer can contemplate without ever truly deciphering.
Her painting soon moves from abstraction to figuration, creating ambiances that constitute complex narratives in an abyss, spaces that demultiply into other spaces through the successive evocation of doors behind doors, or paintings within paintings. These spaces of reflection, introspection, reading and work (in particular her studio) are the epicentre and object of her painting.
The pictorial construction of these settings is rigorous and programmatic, being established from a basis in abstract geometric grids that demarcate and organise planes, perspectives and volumes. The human figure, almost always female, solitary and melancholic, is introduced as a model, as a reflection in the mirror, or as the subject of the painting itself. The gesturality of the hands and faces represented deepens the theatricality and intimacy of the scenes, whose vanishing point is often found outside.
Menez’s erudite and metaphysical painting evokes a numb dreamlike atmosphere, an interiority that is uniquely her own and that is shaped silently, in countless layers, gradations and tonal variations, by the diaphanous quality of colour and light.
Text originally written for Google Arts & Culture apropos the exhibition “All I Want, Portuguese Women Artists from 1900 to 2020”, curated by Helena de Freitas and Bruno Marchand
Portrait
Courtesy João Cutileiro Art Centre © João Cutileiro (detail)
