The Guggenheim Museum in New York is presenting Collection in Focus | Beatriz Milhazes: Rigor and Beauty from March 7 – September 7, 2025. The art exhibition brings together 15 paintings and works on paper created between 1995 and 2003 by the Brazilian artist from the museum’s collection, supplemented with critical loans. The works prominently feature the ‘monotransfer’ layering technique that the painter developed. Rigor and Beauty is organised by Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, curator at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, who joins STIR for an interview exploring the artist’s inspirations and the connection between her work and Brazilian culture.

Her work is also influenced by Tropicália, the Carioca-based movement that combined art, music and writing to celebrate Brazilian culture and protest the repressive military regime that had dominated Brazil in the 1960s. – Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, curator at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York

Milhazes developed monotransfer in 1989, before creating her first publicly exhibited paintings, such as Santa Cruz (1995) and In Albis (1995 – 1996). Monotransfer involves the artist painting motifs onto plastic sheets before adhering these to a canvas. Milhazes then removes the sheets and adds more layers of paint on top in the same manner. The process is intended to eliminate signs of the artist’s brushwork, as the paint is smoothened out when pressed against the canvas. Layer by layer, Milhazes builds up vibrant canvases that are filled with motifs inspired by nature around her studio, which overlooks a botanical garden in Rio de Janeiro. These floral and geometrical forms are also informed by Brazilian culture, particularly by the outward-fanning plumage associated with Rio Carnival costumes, among other elements.

Gutiérrez-Guimarães discusses Milhazes’ inspirations, telling STIR, “Her work is also influenced by Tropicália, the Carioca-based movement that combined art, music, and writing to celebrate Brazilian culture and protest the repressive military regime that had dominated Brazil in the 1960s.” Milhazes, who was born in Rio in 1960, grew up during the Fifth Brazilian Republic (1964 – 1985), a military dictatorship supported by the United States that was established after a successful coup d'état against the left-leaning president João Goulart (1919 – 1976). The regime was responsible for numerous human rights violations and forced disappearances and cracked down heavily on journalistic and artistic expression in Brazil, to strengthen its rule and crush leftist sympathies.

In response to the repressive atmosphere, Brazilian artists formed the multidisciplinary Tropicália movement, which most prominently included music. The sound of Tropicália resembled Brazilian folk beats blended with American psychedelic rock, mirroring the prevalent practice of combining Western and Brazilian influences in visual art as well. Tropicália intended to create a new identity for Brazilian art, reflecting on the nation’s history and contemporary realities, in stark contrast to its popular perception as a ‘tropical paradise’. While the movement was short-lived, lasting from the late 60s to the early 70s, its legacy continues to reverberate throughout Brazilian art through the work of artists such as Milhazes.

Like the art produced through Tropicália, there is more to Milhazes’ paintings than meets the eye. Art historian Mark Godfrey has written about the artist, mentioning the sense of ruin that contemporary readings of her work point to. The tiny losses in paint that occur through the monotransfer process give her work a distressed appearance, which Godfrey has tied to Milhazes’ proximity to sites of deforestation, such as the Amazon rainforest. Simultaneously, one could also read her work as a meditation on the vibrancy of Brazilian culture, in contrast with its complicated—and sometimes violent—modern history.

Going beyond the colourful canvases on display, Rigor and Beauty prompts American audiences to delve deeper into a national history that is not well understood outside Latin America and, yet, is tied closely to American geopolitics.

‘Collection in Focus | Beatriz Milhazes: Rigor and Beauty’ is on view from March 7 to September 7, 2025, at the Guggenheim, New York.