Beatriz Milhazes. Art Edition No. 1–100 ‘Coaracy’

Tropical Abstractions

The colors and concepts of Beatriz Milhazes in a limited art edition

In her vibrant paintings, Beatriz Milhazes fuses modernist abstraction with the colors and light of her native Brazil. Strewn with forms and symbols taken from everyday culture and history, the paintings invoke traditional crafts, the seasons, cells under the microscope, the tropical forest, the carnival, religion and motifs from baroque to pop, all choreographed in an exuberant visual rhythm. The new edition of TASCHEN’s seminal Milhazes monograph has been expanded with works up to 2020, including paintings, collages, a tapestry and some of her most spectacular murals and public art. The book was created in close collaboration with Beatriz Milhazes, who selected the images and specially designed the chapter breaks. It includes a conversation with editor Hans Werner Holzwarth, an art-historical essay by David Ebony, a poetic dictionary of Milhazes’ key motifs by Adriano Pedrosa and an updated biography by Luiza Interlenghi round off this comprehensive work.

This numbered Art Edition of 100 copies comes as a leather-bound book with numbered and signed silkscreen print by Beatriz Milhazes. She developed the composition as she changed her artistic approach during the COVID lockdown to create a series of intimate, luminous drawings composed in a circular format new to her work: “My studio is very precious and I always like to have my studio to be physically separate from home,” she describes the situation. “So this moment is totally unusual for me, because I’m working on a drawing as a medium, something I never did before, and also working from home.” From one of these drawings—titled Coaracy, after the Tupi name for the Mother Sun, creator of all living beings—Milhazes realized this silkscreen print in 78 spectacular colors at the workshop of Agustinho Coradello in Rio de Janeiro.

Art Edition (No. 1–100), with the print Coaracy, numbered and signed by Beatriz Milhazes