Beatriz Milhazes

B. 1960, Rio de janeiro, Brazil

Beatriz Milhazes completed her first prints with Durham Press in 1996. Realizing the similarities between her signature collage process and the logic of print, the artist quickly integrated printmaking into her overall practice. Her collaboartions at Durham Press produced screenprints and relief works that evolved in tandem with, and have often had impacts on, her paintings. Several exhibitions have been devoted to her print collaborations at Durham Press, with presentations at Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro (1998); James Cohan Gallery, New York (2007); Whitechapel Gallery at Windsor, Florida (2011); and Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro (2012), among others.

Born 1960 in Rio de Janeiro, Beatriz Milhazes came to prominence in her native Brazil in the 1980s and by the end of the next decade had garnered international attention for her vibrant abstract paintings. Many of her works feature a distinctive collaging technique in which she paints images on plastic sheets before transferring them to a canvas, creating a layered, cumulative image. Her influences are wide-ranging: from the gardens and parks near her studio, to forms drawn from Brazilian folk art and the country’s modernist art and architecture, to the visual languages of European painters such as Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Bridget Riley.

Milhazes is represented by Pace Gallery, New York; Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo; Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; and White Cube, London. In addition to numerous solo shows at these and other commercial galleries, her work has been the focus of individual presentations at prominent institutions internationally, including Benesse House, Naoshima, Japan (2019); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, Buenos Aires (2012); Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2012); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2011); Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (2009); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (2008); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2004); and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England. In 2003 Milhazes was selected to represent Brazil at the Venice Biennale. From 2014 to 2015, the Pérez Art Museum Miami presented a major, career-spanning retrospective of Milhazes’s work, her first in the United States.

Milhazes’s work is included in prestigious private and public collections including those of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan;Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fondation Beyeler, Basel;Fundación La Caixa, Madrid; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; Museu de Belas Artes, Caracas; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, among many others.

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