The Vibrant Paintings of Beatriz Milhazes Arrive at the Guggenheim

When I visited Rio de Janeiro recently, I spent an afternoon at the Botanical Garden—home to orchids and bromeliads, giant monsteras, and the grandest canopy of palms you’ll ever see. It had just rained, and everything was slick and extra green, like a magical paradise. For decades the 65-year-old Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes has maintained a studio near the gardens. With this tropical flora as her backdrop, and with Brazil’s complex past in mind, Milhazes builds up her canvases layer by layer. Embedded in her designs are flowers, fruits, and intricate patterns inspired by traditional textiles and 19th-century costumes. “I think that art, this practice—it’s always kind of a mystery,” Milhazes says.

This Friday, 15 of her spellbinding works go on view in one of the tower galleries at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Spanning 1995 to 2023, the exhibition, “Beatriz Milhazes: Rigor and Beauty,” represents the artist’s movement from ornamental arabesques to more geometric abstraction. Throughout, “color remains of the essence: vibrant, bold, her own chromatic universes,” says Guggenheim curator Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, who organized the show. Perhaps no other artist has better succeeded at capturing Rio’s exuberant blend of maximalism and grit.