The collection from the Museum Arpad Szenes- Vieira da Silva meets a significant core of paintings and drawing, which covers a vast period of the work of both artists: from 1911 to 1985 to Arpad Szenes, and from 1926 to 1986 to Vieira da Silva. The illustration’s core of the artist also includes works from 1990 and 1991, a year before her death.
The Collection of art work from the Museum also incorporates works from other artists, contemporary to the couple, their friends, admirers or disciples- in case of Arpad Szenes- where it stands a number of works by Portuguese artists, most of them in early career.
The collection also includes special editions illustrated by Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva, an important core of photography from their personal archive and an epistolography background with about 4000 items dating back to 1930, dates that coincides with the departure of Vieira da Silva to Paris and later marriage with Arpad and includes the couple’s correspondence with Portuguese and foreign artists and intellectuals, for decades.
The Museum art work collection can be grouped in three major parts, organized by date and type of inclusion.
A first set which comprises the biggest work volume from the artist, about 3200 pieces of drawings, paintings and prints, donated by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva to the Calousts Gulbenkian Foundation in 1987, still the museum dedicated to her and Arpad Szenes work was just an idea. This donation had by condition all works to be deposited in a future Arpad Szenes- Vieira da Silva Museum, and attach to it a set of 71 works by Portuguese artists from the artist private collection.
The second group of work to be brought to the Museum consists in 20 pieces by Arpad Szenes and 18 pieces by Vieira da Silva, selected by her and repeated in will, given to the Portuguese State and negotiated between the French and Portuguese governments. These works arrived to Portugal only in August 1994, and immediately joined the Museum collection.
The third group, and one of the most representatives by its importance and value, consists in a group of work by private, institutions or private collectors, and it’s placed in the Museum by its opening date, in November 1994, or after. It stands out the group of works from the collector Jorge de Brito, today’s owned by his heirs, which is definitely one of the largest and most outstanding collections of Vieira da Silva, gathering about 16 paintings unavoidable in the artist career. Are also important the works from Modern Art Centre from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, placed in the Museum, from the Lisbon Metropolitan and from some private collectors, patents in Museum’s the permanent collection.
