Vieira da Silva / Penalba. The Path to Consecration

A painter and a sculptor, respectively, both also engravers, Vieira da Silva and Penalba were born five years apart. Over the course of their careers, the two artists played an active part in the cultural hub that was École de Paris, a shared context that fostered their friendship.

Their paths converged in the early 1950s, when Vieira returned from Brazil and Penalba left Argentina for Paris. In 1959, they were among the few women invited to participate in the prestigious Documenta II in Kassel. Two years later, the VI Bienal de São Paulo awarded them important prizes, marking a crucial milestone in their professional lives.

Space, explored as an abstract concept, is a fundamental characteristic of both the painter and the sculptor’s works. For Vieira, space appears as architectural, transforming from domestic interiors to vast cityscapes. In Penalba’s case, space refers to natural landscapes, particularly those of Patagonia and Chile, which she evokes through her biomorphic figures.

For both artists, space seemed to be a vital dimension that symbolised solitude, fears and anxieties inherent to their personalities. Both artists drew from their individual experiences, their difficult childhoods and the challenges faced in exile, which they used to nourish their practice. Feelings of nostalgia and saudade also permeate their work, unveiling a deeply personal poiesis. Their abstract language is shaped by the transformation of simple geometric forms through movement, progression, rotation, and repetition, suggesting a temporal sense of metamorphosis.

Neither figuratives nor entirely abstract, the correspondences are multiple: they appear in the structure of the works, their sources of inspiration and their Latin culture, and extend to the shared, deep, absolute commitment of the two women to their artistic practice.