Beatriz Milhazes

Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes (born 1960) derives the basic motifs for her colorful, seductive paintings from the tropical flora and fauna of her homeland, juxtaposing a native color palette with explicit borrowings from the western canon (Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay). In her lively compositions, abstract ornaments, arabesques, flowers and geometrical shapes pile up vertiginously into rhythmic deluges of bright pattern. Milhazes emerged alongside the Geração Oitenta (1980s Generation) movement, which, in tandem with trends in America and Europe, proclaimed a return to painting after the conceptual austerities of the 1970s. Milhazes’ art vividly expresses this new hedonistic approach to the picture plane, which also recalls something of the spirit of the 1960s Tropicalia artists. This publication presents beautiful reproductions of four new monumental paintings that improvise on the theme of the four seasons, as well as new collages and a mobile sculpture.