Beatriz Milhazes

Beatriz Milhazes (born 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, where she was born in 1960. It is in her studio with a view over the Botanical Garden that she polishes up her work.

She has had innumerous international solo exhibitions including Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2008); Fondation Cartier, Paris (2009); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2011); Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2012); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano (Malba), Buenos Aires (2012); Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro (2013), Pérez Art Museum, Miami, USA (2014/2015), White Cube Gallery, London (2018), MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2020), Long Museum (West Bund), Shanghai (2021), Pace Gallery, NY (2022), Turner Contermporary and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin (2023).

Milhazes is considered as one of the most important Brazilian artists, having participated at Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1995); Sydney Biennial, Sydney (1998); Venice Biennale (2003); São Paulo Biennial (1998, 2004); and Shangai Biennial, Shangai (2006).

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; MNBA – Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo; Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo; Fundação Edson Queiroz, Fortaleza; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo Art Museum, Tokyo; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Milhazes is represented by Pace Gallery, New York; Galeria Fortes D’Aloia e Gabriel, Sao Paulo; Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; and White Cube, London.

She lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.