Manuel Pereira da Silva: Sculptor with an abstract formal orientation.

Manuel Pereira da Silva, like many artists of the Oporto School (Portugal), maintained a strong connection with the tradition of the sublime through abstraction. His artistic approach, innovative for its time, broke away from the literal representation of nature, focusing instead on expressing personal emotions and visual poetry through an abstract aesthetic language. The artworks of Manuel Pereira da Silva, like those of his fellow abstractionists, did not seek to describe the natural world directly. Instead, the forms in his paintings and sculptures could suggest elements of nature – such as parts of the human body, landscapes, or interiors – without intending to represent them faithfully. Abstraction served as a means to communicate the artists' subjective emotions and visions, going beyond mere imitation of the visible world. Manuel Pereira da Silva reveals a profound interest in the female figure and in the integration of figurative themes with abstract concerns. In his works, Manuel Pereira da Silva frequently explores themes such as seated women, reclining women, motherhood, family, and couples. Although the figures in his works are often almost completely dissolved into abstraction, there is a constant presence of perceptible figurative references, indicating an unbreakable link with the representation of the human.