During the France-Portugal 2022 season and with the support of the Calouste Gubelkian Foundation, the Cantini museum offers, from June 9 to November 6, 2022, in collaboration with the museums of Dijon and the Jeanne Bucher Jaeger gallery, "Vieira da Silva, l 'Eye of the Labyrinth', a retrospective of the work of internationally renowned Portuguese-born artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992).  With a set of one hundred paintings and drawings, this retrospective retraces the key stages of his career marked by a relentless questioning of perspective, urban transformations, architectural dynamics and the musicality of the pictorial touch.

The chronological and thematic journey declines the career of the artist, from his figurative beginnings in Lisbon in the 1920s to the evanescent paintings of the 1980s.  Conceived as "terrible" and evanescent labyrinths, the works of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva summon the power of the gaze, placing the viewer's eye at the heart of the subject and its absorption in the work. His visionary work shows us the labyrinthine beginnings of our connected lives. 

"Perspective is a way of playing with space. I have great pleasure in looking at space, rhythms. The architecture of a city is related to music. There are long times, short times. There are small windows. There are large ones."

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva