The ornamental and brightly coloured works of Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes (b. 1960) draw upon diverse references spanning traditional arabesques, Brazilian Baroque, Brazilian Modernism, and Henri Matisse’s papiers découpés. Influenced by the tropical climate and vegetation of her home country as well as by the urban environment of cities like Rio de Janeiro, Milhazes combines traditional imagery and cultural clichés with geometric forms and structured compositions, creating dynamic and captivating works. Although painting has formed a major part of her œuvre since the start of her career, Milhazes constantly extends her work to include different media and techniques such as textiles, wrappers and collage, as well as intricate mobiles comprising mirroring balls, chains and flowers.
‘Despite the vividness of her colors and compositions, a relative slowness is characteristic of Milhazes' working method, and it is this measured rhythm which enables her to cover increasingly vast distances in time as in space. The Brazil that concerns her is not just that of the morning newspapers and the news on TV Globo. Her Brazil goes right back to the sixteenth century and even earlier. And her country interests her all the more for bearing the marks of multiple cross-cultural currents. For us non-Brazilians, from a distance, it is a mythical country, that of a successful racial diversity, one where economic expansion has not erased extreme social differences, but which is waging a struggle against extreme poverty. For the Brazilian artist, it is history made real.’
F. Paul, 'In China, you must know, the Emperor is a Chinaman, and all whom he has about him are Chinamen too’, in Beatriz Milhazes: Snow in the Tropics, exh. cat., Pinacoteca do Estate São Paulo, São Paulo, and travelling; Milan: Electa, 2011
