On the occasion of the opening of her first major U.S. retrospective, Jardim Botânico, Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes speaks with PAMM Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander about the evolution of her work. 

Before the conversation, enjoy family art-making on the terrace.

The exhibition features the artist’s large-scale abstract paintings inspired by Brazilian and European Modernism, Baroque forms, popular culture, and the decorations of Carnival.  During the early 1990s, the artist developed an unusual painting technique, in which she adhered separate images executed in acrylic paint-such as flowers, arabesques, lace patterns or peace-signs-onto canvases in a style that references collage, graffiti, and plastic decals. This practice results in richly textured surfaces that appear prematurely aged. The exhibition will include works produced over the last 25 years of the artist’s career and examine their evolution from softer, more decorative forms to harder-edged abstraction.