Beatriz Milhazes

Beatriz Milhazes (born 1960 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Brazilian contemporary artist known for vibrant, highly decorative paintings that combine geometric abstraction with references to Brazilian culture, nature, architecture, and design.

Milhazes studied at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro during the early 1980s. She emerged as part of a generation of Brazilian artists that renewed interest in painting following a period dominated by conceptual and experimental practices.

Her work is immediately recognizable for its intense color, intricate layering, and combinations of circles, flowers, arabesques, stripes, and ornamental patterns. Her influences range from Brazilian Carnival decorations, tropical vegetation, textiles, and colonial architecture to European modernists such as Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian.

Milhazes developed a distinctive working method in which she paints elements onto transparent plastic sheets and then transfers them onto canvas. Portions of paint remain on the plastic during the transfer, creating irregular surfaces and subtle imperfections within otherwise carefully structured compositions.

Although her paintings often appear spontaneous and exuberant, they are constructed through complex arrangements of color, shape, rhythm, and overlapping forms. This tension between geometry and ornamentation has become central to her visual language.

Milhazes has exhibited extensively in Brazil and internationally, and her work is represented in major museum collections around the world. She continues to live and work in Rio de Janeiro and is regarded as one of the most internationally recognized Brazilian contemporary artists of her generation.