Vieira da Silva work to be shown at Tate Liverpool

This autumn, Tate Liverpool will present a new film installation by artist Emily Speed, as the inaugural Art North West commission, which will be shown alongside a painting by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. 

The Corridor, a 1950 work by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, belongs to the Tate Collection and forms part of a series of paintings made by Vieira da Silva after she moved to Paris in 1948. Despite appearing largely monochromatic, The Corridor contains violet, blue, green, yellow, red, black, grey and white – a palette similar to that used by post-impressionist painter Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).

Vieira da Silva’s depictions of allegorical space and representations of internal architectural structure have influenced Speed’s practice. The Corridor depicts a claustrophobic grey interior or corridor with a low ceiling, close walls and a sharp vanishing point, to which the eye is led by multiple and conflicting perspectival lines.