Hommage à Jena-Etienne Liotard 150 x 100 cm Painting

Miriam Da Silva was born in Sao Paulo on March 8, 1964. Upon finishing her secondary education from the Therezinha Sartori school she decided to enroll into the Faculty of Fine Arts of São Paulo. Having successful passed the entrance exam she began studying there in 1983 and received a "License in Visual Arts" in 1986. For two years, from 1987 to 1988, after passing a public competition, she taught art education in two public schools in the town of Maua, in the State of São Paulo. During this period she also studied classical piano with pianist Helena Scheffel and later with pianist Harley Andry Bleck Gonzalez. At the same time she studied music at the Arts Foundation of São Caetano do Sul and sang in a choir in Santo André city, São Paulo. The choir performed works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Beethoven and Villa-Lobos. In 1989, after meeting the artist and architect Davis Leichsenring at Masp Art Museum of São Paulo, she decided to travel to Europe, eager for new discoveries. Arriving in Geneva she discovered an intense cultural life and an interesting mixture of more than one hundred different cultures. She studied for five years and graduated in French language and literature from the Alliance-Francaise. Later, she studied graphic design and english at the IFAGE - Institute of Adult Education of Geneva. During this period she continued to draw and paint. At this time she decides to see more of Europe and discovered cities such as Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Munich, Madrid, Barcelona, "‹"‹Florence, Siena, etc. In 1993 she decided to go to Rome for some time. There, she discovered the works of many artists and in particular Carlo Roselli. With Roselli she learned ancient techniques of oil painting and the "tempera" method from the renaisance. From this, her roman period, sprung a series of 10 paintings inspired by the columns at the "Foro Romano". In 1994 she continued her travels to London where she studied and practiced her English. Aso in 1994, she also decided to enroll at the University of Aix-en-Provence to study art history. Although she passed the entrance exam, she later decided to further her studies in plastic arts through dedicated work as an artist. Back in Geneva she started to create a series of paintings inspired by her roman period and found her way of painting had changed following the techniques she had learned in Rome, giving her paintings a much deeper tone with shade and light interacting intensly.