‘My figuration comes from various external sources, like Indigenous art and Carnival traditions, but also from graphic art. My flowers, my relationship with nature, stem from the graphic universe, from illustrations of fruits and plants and decorative art. Geometry gives structure to my sensibility and organizes my references, my imagination.’

Beatriz Milhazes, 2022

Executed in 2016 and exhibited at Tate St Ives (2024) and Turner Contemporary, Margate (2023), Beatriz Milhazes’ large-scale painting Douradinha em cinza e marrom presents an exuberant burst of colour, shape and form. The work was created using the artist’s meticulous and complex method of ‘monotransfer’, first developed in 1989. Based on experiments with acrylic paint and monotype printing, this controlled method allows Milhazes to paint motifs onto plastic sheets before carefully transferring them onto canvas, imbuing her works with a sense of dynamism and texture. The artist has related Henri Matisse’s emblematic collages to her own technique of layering, which creates the appearance of a glossy, highly finished surface, disrupted on closer inspection by small fissures and flecks of paint.

Translating to ‘Golden in Grey and Brown’, the title is suggestive of the rich influence of colour on Milhazes’ work. Brimming with vitality and movement in kaleidoscopic hues, the present work is evocative of the artist’s native Brazil, with its bountiful flora and fauna, as well as the spirit of Carnival, which all play an important role in her work. Drawing inspiration from the ocean, situated near to her studio, as well as the Botanical Gardens and Tijuca rainforest, Douradinha em cinza e marrom is invigorated with organic forms. Leafy shapes and blooming flowers are set against a densely patterned background of checkered squares and rectangles. The work thus reveals Milhazes’ deep connection with nature and the Brazilian environment, which have inspired her both artistically and spiritually.

In colour and composition, style and form, Milhazes alludes to Baroque art, the pioneers of abstract painting, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Alexander Rodchenko, as well as artists Sonia Delaunay and Bridget Riley. All of these references are important for their visual kinship as well as for the transcendent and intellectual context they provide. Indeed, meticulously rendered and deeply evocative, the transfer technique behind Milhazes’ seemingly spontaneous compositions generates an artistic pause, a moment of philosophical consideration and stillness amidst the brilliant vibrancy of her paintings.

__________
REFERENCES

B. Milhazes, ‘Beatriz Milhazes in Conversation with Polly Apfelbaum’, in Beatriz Milhazes: Mistura Sagrada, exh. cat., New York: Pace, 2022.