Beatriz Milhazes

“Formulaic” would be one way to describe Beatriz Milhazes’s method, yet that would very much belittle the Brazilian artist’s paintings. Her technique really stems from collage and printmaking. She typically paints shapes onto sheets of plastic, peels them off after they’ve dried, and applies them to her canvas. The results resemble fireworks, in a way––brightly colored balls, baroque curves and patterns, circles within circles, and atoms of color seem to endlessly float across the picture plane. While Milhazes’s previous work appeared to be full of detail and incident, these recent pieces seem more schematized and spacious. Gone are the more figural references and pop motifs. For instance, Sarara, 2010, is a narrow, vertical canvas, which unfolds like a Chinese scroll.

Tropicalia, caipirinhas, samba, and modernism aside, it is really football that defines the culture of Brazil. In comparison with the game played in other countries, which tends to be more collective and organized, Brazilian football is expressive and individual as a form. At its core there is a truly unique expression of individuality, or at least something so particular that we now call it “Brazilian.” The same could be said of Milhazes’s work, though in technique and spirit her output brings to mind early European modernists like Fernand Léger and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, or Russian avant-gardists (like Liubov Popova), in their drive to bring advanced art to the masses via design. Milhazes’s exuberant forms evoke a strong sense of her country, yet they remain completely nonfigurative. If painterly abstraction could ever give a sense of place or an ethos, then Milhazes certainly succeeds.