Beatriz Milhazes, TASCHEN

As vibrant as her unique visual language, this monograph presents the work of Beatriz Milhazes, the Brazilian painter who fuses modernist abstraction with the colors and light of her native country.

• Beatriz Milhazes (Brazilian, b. 1960).
• Köln: TASCHEN, 2017.
• With over 280 paintings, an in-depth essay on her work, a long conversation piece, a poetic dictionary of key motifs and a year-by-year biography.
• Numbered and signed by Milhazes.
• Edition of 1,000.
• Hardcover in clamshell box, 480 pages.

The large-scale geometric paintings of Beatriz Milhazes are a marriage between European and Brazilian Modernism, and she is considered Brazil’s most successful contemporary painter. 

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Milhazes was fascinated with décor, fashion and geometry in a time where there was little exposure to contemporary painting. She studied art at Escola de artes visuais do Parque Lage in the early ’80s, calling herself a geometric abstractionist, and influenced by Matisse, Mondrian and Tarsila do Amaral.  

She has developed a unique brushstroke-free method of applying paint to canvas by applying acrylic motifs onto sheets of plastic before transferring them to the canvas and peeling off the plastic, leaving the shape behind like a decal. Layering the canvas with swirling, overlapping images, she creates lush paintings that are richly saturated and wildly imaginative, yet remain deceptively complex. 

After an invitation to show her work at Carnegie International in 1995, Milhazes’ career expanded internationally. In 2012, her Meu Limão (2000) was auctioned at Sotheby’s for $2.1 million, making it the highest-priced artwork from a living artist in Brazil. Milhazes’ work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim in NYC, MoMA and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, among others.