Beatriz Milhazes

Drawing Influence from the optical reactions provoked by artists like Bridget Riley and Tarsila do Amaral, Milhazes believes that art is an essential way for people to aestheticize an 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’Keefe, and Elizabeth Murray(3) She has also cited the canon of Brazilian art history as “empowering in its celebration of women artists such as herself.”

Inspired by late Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, artist Beatriz Milhazes created Gamboa II, an installation suspended from the ceiling at the Jewish Museum in NYC from May, 2016 to mid September, 2016.

Thematically, the work of Beatriz Milhazes has been described by critics 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 colours 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 has had solo and group exhibitions in a number of museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. From 4–21 July 2009, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris presented a major exhibition of her work.

Her 2000 painting "Meu Limão" "sold [in 2012] for $2.1 million dollars at Sotheby's in California, making her the highest-priced living Brazilian artist at auction."

In terms of technique, Milhazes is predominantly concerned with the principle of collage, drawing from her combined knowledge of both Latin American and European traditions. The cultural mixing of her native Brazil is something Milhazes is aware of and to some degree communicates in her paintings as well as being in ties with the Brazilian modernist movement. Milhazes many other influences come from her own fascination with the decorative arts, fashion, and geometry. Milhazes has described her own work in saying "I think of my work as geometric, yet I can't put everything into a square or a circle." Her self-developed process of art making came about during her extensive researching of printing processes in the 1980s.

Beatriz Milhazes (born 1960) is a Brazilian artist. She is known for her work juxtaposing Brazilian cultural imagery and references to western Modernist painting.

The daughter of a lawyer and an art historian, Milhazes was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1960. She studied social communication at Faculdades Integradas Hélio Alonso (FACHA), Rio de Janeiro from 1978 to 1981 and studied at the School of Visual Arts (Escola de Artes Visuais - EAV) of Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro from 1980 to 1982.