Vieira da Silva - O Espaço e Outros Enigmas: Grandes Obras em Grandes Coleções

"Great artists never let us forget the places their gaze has taken them. The memory of these places lives on forever in their work and in those who see it. 

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva painted a painting she called Ville ou Porto. This exhibition gives that painting the place that allows it to coincide with itself. In the journey that is her painting, Vieira da Silva is the heroine 'of a thousand stratagems, who wandered so much after having destroyed the sacred acropolis of Troy, who saw cities and learned the customs of many men and who suffered a thousand torments at sea, while struggling for her life and her return' (The Odyssey). Unlike Penelope, it was she who sailed the seas, surrounded by fears and monsters, sometimes driven and sometimes hindered by the gods, while Arpad, unlike Ulysses, stayed in Ithaca, weaving and unweaving his wait. This Vieira was the one of whom Agustina Bessa-Luís, her friend, said: 'She was timid in her greatness so as not to be vulgar in her pride.' This Vieira was the one of whom Cesariny, her friend, said: 'There is something in Vieira’s work that I like to compare to the powers of a shaman.' This Vieira was the one with wide-open eyes that threw themselves at things, ready to devour the world: 'Everything astonishes me. I paint my astonishment, which is at once wonder, terror, laughter.'"

— José Manuel dos Santos