Beatriz Milhazes (b. 1960) is a Brazilian artist known for her collage-like paintings that reference modernism and the visual language of her own Brazilian culture. Milhazes blends the modernist grid, of artists like Mondrain, with ornamental decoration and abundance inspired by the local flora and fauna surrounding her studio, which neighbors Rio de Janiero’s botanical gardens. Milhazes first paints her decorative patterns and motifs onto sheets of plastic. After the acrylic paint has dried to the plastic, she applies the small paintings to canvas using glue, which separates the paint from the plastic, similar to the way one would apply decals. The result is a decorative assemblage of shapes and bright colors that contain very little traces of brushwork. Milhazes is considered a crossover success, one made possible by her work’s inclusion in the 1995 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. Her appropriation of Carnival, Brazilian baroque, local pop culture, embroidery and lace into works that make use of the modernist grid and geometric abstraction, has earned her the title of a “glocal” artist. Madeleine Grynsztejn, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, has stated: “What I really loved about the work, was the way that it merged figuration and abstraction, and even decoration and craft, within the highly intellectual enterprise of formal abstraction”. Beatriz Milhazes is represented by James Cohan Gallery in New York, Galeria Fortes Vilaça in Brazil, Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, and Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin. See also Philip Taafe and Lari Pitman.