VIEIRA DA SILVA, MARIA ELENA

Maria Elena also rendered Marie-hlne born June 13, 1908, Lisbon, Port. died March 6, 1992, Paris, Fr. Portuguese-born French painter of intricate, semiabstract architectural compositions. Vieira da Silva studied sculpture first with Antoine Bourdelle at Paris in 1928 and later with Charles Despiau. Her interest in painting flowered under the tutelage of Fernand Lger and Stanley William Hayter. Although the abstract patterning of her early paintings tended toward the decorative, her mastery of spatial manipulation became apparent. The luminous spots and intersecting lines in her paintings assumed an explicit architectural organization, culminating in the dreamlike cityscapes of such mature works as Golden City (1956). She and her husband (the Hungarian artist Arpad Szenes) lived in Brazil during World War II. She returned to Paris in 1947 and became a French citizen in 1956.