Maria Helena Vieira da Silva was born on June 13, 1908, in Lisbon. 

Very early on, he awakened to music and painting, and at the age of eleven he began studying piano and singing at home, drawing and painting in the studios of the painter Emília dos Santos Braga and the painter Armando de Lucena, and modeling with the sculptor Rogério de Andrade. Shortly afterwards, she entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon and, also motivated by sculpture, attended the Anatomy course, taught by professor Henrique Vilhena, at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, in 1926.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva traveled to Italy, where she was inspired by the works of the Sienese school, created illustrations for children's books, participated in the Salon d'Automne and at the Salon des Surindépendants (1931) in Paris, he joined, together with Árpád, the classes of the French painter Roger Bissière at the Académie Ranson, he met gallerist Jeanne Bucher, who began to represent his artistic work,[6] he sold his first painting to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She established herself as a painter in Paris, where she met her husband Arpad Szenes, and became one of the most celebrated abstract artists in post-war Europe, with her original geometric compositions.

After a period of exile in Brazil during World War II, she was granted French citizenship, a country that welcomed her for the rest of her life and where she obtained the greatest artistic awards ;national stics. His career would also be associated with important public art commissions, scenography, tapestry, stained glass and illustration works. The entire body of work has been the subject of repeated retrospectives and is on display all over the world.

He passed away at the age of 83, on March 6, 1992, in Paris, France.