Between the Backyard and the Terreiro: Vieira da Silva at Cecília Meireles’ Childhood Gate

Abstract

'Olhinhos de Gato', an autobiographical book by Cecília Meireles, was first published in chapters, between 1938 and 1940, in the Portuguese magazine 'Ocidente'. In correspondence with the Azorean poet Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues, in the 1940s, Cecília comments that the book would be published in Brazil with illustrations by the Portuguese artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. It is not known why the edition did not take place, but at the foundation that maintains the artist's collection in Portugal, the series of six paints and a gouache entitled Souvenir de Cecília shows that the artist created the illustrations. Viewed together, text and images show both the resonances of the relationship between the artists and Cecília's interest in issues of memory and popular culture in a context of extreme appreciation of the latter. In this sense, the article proposes, from this joint reading, to approach both Cecília's interests that were at stake in this publication and the way in which they reverberate in Vieira da Silva's work and experience in Brazil.