Mary Vieira (1927–2001) was a Brazilian sculptor. She was born and raised in

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...

. She at the studied with Alberto da Veiga Guignard in

Belo Horizonte Belo Horizonte (, ; ) is the sixth-largest city in Brazil, with a population around 2.7 million and with a metropolitan area of 6 million people. It is the 13th-largest city in South America and the 18th-largest in the Americas. The metropol ...

. She also studied sculpture with

Franz Weissmann Franz Josef Weissmann (September 15, 1911 – July 18, 2005) was a Brazilian sculptor born in Austria, emigrating to Brazil while he was eleven years old. Geometric shapes, like cubes and squares, are strongly featured in his works. He was one ...

and

Amilcar de Castro The Amilcar was a French automobile manufactured from 1921 to 1940. History Foundation and location Amilcar was founded in July 1921 by Joseph Lamy and Emile Akar. The name "Amilcar" was an imperfect anagram of the partners' names. The b ...

. In 1947, she exhibited in Belo Horizonte Municipality’s Hall of Brazilian Young Artists.

Mary Vieira in Europe

In 1951, Mary Vieira settled in Europe to work with the Swiss artist

Max Bill Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer. Early life and education Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversmith ...

. In 1953, Vieira won the Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Modern Art “Brazilian Sculpture” Award in São Paulo’s 2nd Biennial. In 1954, at Bill's invitation, she participated in the Constructivist Gruppe Allianz’s last exhibition. In 1957, Mary Vieira married Italian poet and critic Carlo Belloli, intensifying a key intellectual dialog for her aesthetic journey. The couple lived and worked between Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil. In Europe, she delved into her proposals of dynamic shaped sculptures that are successively classified as: monovolumes, multivolumes, polyvolumes, and intervolumes. One of her best known pieces, "Polyvolume: Meeting Point," was fabricated between 1960 and 1970 for installation in the

Itamaraty Palace The Itamaraty Palace (), also known as the Palace of the Arches (''Palácio dos Arcos''), is the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil. It is located in the national capital of Brasília. The building was designed by architect ...

in Brazil's new capital, Brasilia. The artist is recognized by international critics as one of kinetic art’s major representatives. In 1966, she was given the “International Marinetti Award for Plastic Research on Kinevisual Expression” on the occasion of the 20th foundation anniversary of the “Salons des Réalités Nouvelles” in Paris’s Municipal Museum of Modern Art.

Mary Vieira around the world

Many of her art pieces are installed in public places in Brazil, such as Belo Horizonte’s Rio Branco Square; São Paulo’s

Ibirapuera Park Ibirapuera Park ( pt, Parque Ibirapuera) is an urban park in São Paulo. It comprises 158 hectares between Av. República do Líbano, Av. Pedro Alvares Cabral, and Av. IV Centenário, and is the most visited park in South America, with 14.4 million ...

; and Brasília’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and abroad, such as the

Basel University The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universitie ...

Library; Italy’s Monte Castello; and in Zurich’s Lake Seefeldquai Park. Further to her sculptures, she developed a number of projects as urbanist, graphic designer, and teacher. She took part in individual as well as collective exhibitions in Europe, Brazil and United States, being awarded a number of important prizes for her work. Mary Vieira died in Basel in 2001.

Mary Vieira and her work

Mary Vieira used to call herself a plastic ''ideaer''. She anticipated divisions between the categories of drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture would be extinguished, and considered interdisciplinarity to be key for the evolution of art. The main concepts in her work are absolutely contemporary. Taking along some models she had idealized before in Brazil, she moved to Switzerland in 1951. In 1952, she was invited to publish the ''Zeiten einer Zeichnung'' series for Spirale, major concretist publishers of the time. And there lies the whole essence of her oeuvre, which unfolds from concretism to kinetic art, or, more precisely, to cinevisualism. As Italian critic and poet Carlo Belloli pointed out, Mary Vieira’s oeuvre ''summons the spectator to art''. The coherence, the precision, and the comprehensiveness of the artist’s aesthetic view have never been totally displayed in her home country.

Mary Vieira and her archive

The Mary Vieira Archive is managed by ISISUF—Isituto Internazionale di Studi sul Futurismo, Milano, Italy.Istituto Internazionale di Studi sul Futurismo, Milano, Italy, Collections, http://www.isisuf.org/collections/

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