Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, August 1, 2024: Beatriz Milhaze, a Brazilian painter, collage artist (#2091)

Thursday, August 1, 2024

Artist of the Day, August 1, 2024: Beatriz Milhaze, a Brazilian painter, collage artist (#2091)

Beatriz Milhazes (1960) is a Brazilian artist. She is known for her work juxtaposing Brazilian cultural imagery and references to western Modernist painting. Milhazes is a Brazilian-born collage artist and painter known for her large-scale works and vibrant colors. She has been called "Brazil's most successful contemporary painter."

Beatriz Milhazes's practice includes painting, drawing and collage. Characterized by vibrant colours, optical movement and energetic visual cadences, her abstract work fuses a diverse repertoire of images and forms, combining elements from her native Brazilian context with European abstraction.

As a painter, Beatriz Milhazes uses a unique transfer technique, first painting on plastic sheets before peeling away the dried shapes and collaging them onto the canvas. When she peels the plastic away, the resulting image is superimposed onto the canvas. For these paintings, as well as her collages, prints, and installations, Milhazes draws on a wide range of aesthetic traditions, including folk and decorative art, European modernism, and Antropofagia, a movement founded in the late 1920s that proposed “cannibalizing” the supposedly high-minded European traditions to create a distinctly Brazilian Culture.

Figurehead of the 80’s Generation, period of the Brazilian art characterized by the return of young artists to painting, Beatriz Milhazes still lives in Rio. It is in her studio with a view over the Botanical Garden that she polishes up her work.

Milhazes is considered as one of the most important Brazilian artists, having participated at Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Sydney Biennial, Sydney; Venice Biennale; São Paulo Biennial; and Shangai Biennial, Shangai.

Her work is included in important museums and public collections such as Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; SFMoMA – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; etc...

Thematically, the work of Beatriz Milhazes has been described by one critic as "abstract, yet having something new to offer." This description is something that she believes draws people into her style, especially from a Western audience. Her work is known to contain many Brazilian folk references and can be interpreted as complex in this regard. These references, apparent in many of the vibrant colors and shapes, are often associated with the very poorest part of the population and are generally thought to be of little interest to the upper classes or intellectuals. These references have today changed in their meaning as the social elite has attached importance to them—the importance of being Brazilian and having Brazilian art. Finding the idea of a contradiction fascinating, it is another factor that influences the outcome of her art.

Milhazes believes that art is an essential way for people to aestheticize and exteriorize their thoughts and feelings. Her work often serves as an exploration of the concept of conflict. Filled with intense colors and shapes, her work serves to inspire a strong dialogue as well as “challenging eye movements over easy beauty.” Milhazes also draws her influences from many other female artists such as Sonia Delaunay, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Elizabeth Murray. She has also cited the canon of Brazilian art history as “empowering in its celebration of women artists such as herself.”

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