Beatriz Milhazes

Tropical abstraction

In her vibrant paintings, Beatriz Milhazes fuses modernist abstraction with the colours and light of her native Brazil. Strewn with forms and symbols taken from everyday culture and history, the paintings invoke traditional crafts, the seasons, cells under the microscope, the tropical forest, the carnival, religion and motifs from baroque to pop, all choreographed in an exuberant visual rhythm. Since her breakthrough as a painter using a transfer technique that allows her to layer a complex array of ornamental shapes, Milhazes has extended the scope of her work to other media : prints and collages made with candy wrappers and shopping bags, experiments with body and rhythm in collaboration with her sister Marcia's ballet ensemble, giant mobile sculptures made of carnival decorations and site-specific works that transform building facades into stained-glass windows - projects that in turn influence her compositions and ever-evolving chromatic progressions.

The colours and concepts of Beatriz Milhazes

This new edition of Taschen's seminal Milhazes monograph has been expanded with works up to 2020, including paintings, collages, a tapestry and some of her most spectacular murals and public art installed at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital or on Inujima Island in Japan. The book was created in close collaboration with Beatriz Milhazes, who selected the images and specially designed the chapter breaks. It includes a conversation with editor Hans Werner Holzwarth, in which the artist unravels her working methods and talks about the ideas and cultural background behind her painting. An art-historical essay by David Ebony, a poetic dictionary of Milhazes' key motifs by Adriano Pedrosa and an updated biography by Luiza Interlenghi round off this comprehensive work.