About the Exhibition

In December 2011, The Gallery at Windsor presented internationally renowned Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes.  The artist’s exuberantly colored, rhythmically constructed artworks have been exhibited worldwide. The Windsor exhibition titled Screenprints 1996 – 2011 was the first comprehensive display of the artist’s bold and abstract works on paper.

Curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director of London’s Whitechapel Gallery, the show represented the first exhibition in a three-year curatorial partnership between the Whitechapel Gallery and The Gallery at Windsor. Beginning in 2011 and concluding in 2014, the Whitechapel Gallery curated an annual site-specific exhibition, creating a salon-like ambience in which leading figures from the art world could meet to discuss and debate ideas.

Central to the exhibition was a series of screen and woodblock prints Milhazes made with Durham Press in Pennsylvania over a 15-year period. These screenprints and woodblock editions offered a subtle and fascinating evolution of form, color and optical rhythm. Bringing all of these prints together presented a coherent, revelatory and visually dazzling journey encompassing European modernism and Brazilian Tropicalia. Milhazes draws inspiration from the street, religion, nature and fashion.

Alongside more than 20 screen and woodblock prints, rarely seen limited-edition artists’ books were on display. Coisa Linda (2002), published by MoMA, New York, contains lyrics from Brazilian songs presented alongside Milhazes’ collaged and cut-out prints. Meu Bem (2008), published by Riding House, describes Rio through images inspired by the Copacabana sidewalk, Samba dancing and wildly shaped plants.

About the Artist

Beatriz Milhazes is well known for her vibrantly colorful, kaleidoscopic collages, prints, paintings and installations, which draw on both Latin American and European traditions. Milhazes’ rigorously structured compositions are punctuated by a recurring set of arabesque motifs inspired by Brazilian culture, ceramics, lacework, carnival decoration, music and Colonial baroque architecture. As Milhazes explains, “I am seeking geometrical structures, but with freedom of form and imagery taken from different worlds.” The artist has also cited opera, classical and Brazilian popular music as having informed the upbeat energy of her stripes, lines, circular forms and rays. The careful balance of harmony and dissonance in Milhazes’ work, combined with her Technicolor palette, are evidence of the strong influence by such 20th century masters as Tarsila do Amaral, Oswald de Andrade, Matisse, Kandinksy and Delaunay.

Born in 1960 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Milhazes initially pursued journalism before changing her focus to study fine art at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage. The artist continues to live and work in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Her works are included in prestigious international collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia, Madrid, Spain; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA to name a few.