Beatriz Milhazes's paintings are seductive. They are like a rare
Amazonian plant - at once both ravishing and deceptive, full of
layers, unexpected tricks and treats. Born in Rio de Janeiro in
1961, Milhazes has over the past two decades built up a rich and
complex repertoire of images, forms and colours in her work.
While she shows an adventurous fusion of in.uences, her canvases
have an undeniably Brazilian flavour - filled with brightly
coloured elements relating to a string of popular Brazilian
motifs, from carnival-inspired imagery to tropical flora and
fauna.
Many
of these explosions of colour originate in her small, compact
studio, where she has been based since 1987. It is situated
right next door to Rio's luscious botanical gardens, and,
inevitably, the forms and patterns of the flowers - delicate
swirls and leaf-like shapes - have found their way into her
paintings. She has also "taken advantage of the atmosphere of
the city", with its rich urban mix incorporating chitão
(the cheap, colourful Brazilian fabric), jewellery, embroidery
and folk art. Other influences range from architectural - the
work of Roberto Burle Marx, the landscape architect and garden
designer who created the five-kilometre Copacabana beach
promenade in Rio - to Pop symbols such as Emilio Pucci fabric
patterns. Painterly inspiration comes from the
seventeenth-century Dutch artist Albert Eckhout, who travelled
through colonial Brazil, and the Brazilian Modernist Tarsila do
Amaral, as well as Mondrian, Matisse and Bridget Riley. Evidence
of her terms of reference can be found pinned to the walls of
her studio - magazine fragments, postcards and pieces of
clothing, as well as some of her own drawings.
Milhazes
often works on several pictures at once. She begins with an idea
of colours and images, but "nothing is clear until the end".
While this may suggest a lack of order, each painting seeming to
be on the brink of collapse, threatening to engulf the viewer,
the artist is in fact "very disciplined" and sticks to a rigid
routine. The end products are dense compositions that reveal a
precise and delicate hand.
Milhazes
emerged around the time of the Brazilian movement Geração
Oitenta (the 1980s Generation), which, as in Europe and the US,
proclaimed a return to painting after the rather austere art of
the 1970s. The new spirit of hedonism, with pleasure as its
liberating motto, was largely expressed in vivid brushstrokes
and rich colours. During this period Milhazes studied at Rio de
Janeiro's Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (from 1980 to
1982), the art school located in a beautiful belle époque
mansion in one of the city's parks. Whatever aspects she may
share with this group, she also has something in common with the
ideas of Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954), the Brazilian poet and
novelist. His Manifesto Antropófago, or
Cannibalistic Manifesto, published in 1928, was a key text
of early Brazilian Modernism. "Tupy, or not tupy, that is the
question," he wrote (Tupy is a language spoken by his country's
natives). It was a profound reflection on the dilemma of the
Modernist intellectual caught between high European literary and
artistic references and his/her own native sources.
Beatriz Milhazes Palmolive
(2004)
Acrylic on canvas, 199x249.5cm
Courtesy Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, and
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.
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Beatriz Milhazes Panamerican
(2004)
Acrylic on canvas, 198x179cm
Courtesy Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, and
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.
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The artistic landscape of Brazil has changed much since then,
and Milhazes's work now has a global audience. In the past year,
for example, she has been involved in collaborative projects
with other disciplines, including the design of a covered façade
for the new Selfridges store in Birmingham. She was recently
interviewed by fashion designer Christian Lacroix (currently
head of Pucci) - and it is easy to see why. They share a passion
for colour, combined with an intuitive yet finely crafted
working process.
Closer
to home, at the São Paulo carnival, the Nênê de Vila Matilde
samba school featured a whole section of sambistas in
Milhazes-inspired costumes. It is clear that her ideas and
images have a life far beyond the dimensions of her canvases.
-Source: TATE |