The Portuguese artist, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, started to study painting at the age of 11, at Lisbon's Academy of Fine Arts. With her interest in learning how to better portray the human figure, she also studied anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine. During World War II, she relocated to Brazil, where she held great influence over Brazilian modern art, with works that lie between figurative and abstract aspects. Her works leap from the two-dimensional space reaching a fine representation of space and depth.