Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, a Portuguese-born artist naturalized French, was born in Lisbon in 1908 and died in 1992. From the age of 11, she immersed herself in learning drawing, later exploring sculpture, painting, and printmaking under the guidance of eminent artists such as Antoine Bourdelle, Fernand Léger, and Johnny Friedlaender. Her multidisciplinary spirit also led her to engage with textile arts and ceramics.

Though versatile, it was her paintings that set her apart, occupying almost the entirety of her practice from 1929 onward. She drew inspiration from the cities and places she visited, morphing them into disorientating geometric landscapes. Her canvases are imbued with receding and impossible perspective lines, exploring infinite space. Her work invites the viewer to lose themselves in compositions often structured like networks, mazes, or spider webs, skillfully playing with the boundary between reality and perception.