Beatriz Milhazes' colourful canvasses

One of the standout shows at the upcoming Art Basel Miami promises to be the result of a collaboration between the Whitechapel Gallery and The Gallery At Windsor, Florida.

The show, Beatriz Milhazes: Screenprints 1996-2011 will explore the process Brazilian artist Beatrice Milhazes uses to create her bold and abstract artworks. Born in Rio in 1960, Milhaze is the daughter of a lawyer and an art historian. After her initial studies in social communication she turned to art, studying at Rio's Escola de Artes Visuais (EAV) of Parque Lage.

The show also sees Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Director and former head of exhibitions and displays at the Tate, return to her curatorial roots.

“I looked at the programme and decided it would be more interesting to go south rather than north,” Blazwick tells Phaidon. “There’s an amazing community of art worlders from across The States at Miami Art Basel, but also Latin America. And I thought it would be interesting to reach out to a new community.”

Beatriz Milhazes, O Pato (1996 – 98)

The Whitechapel has always had a strong connection with Brazilian art (the gallery hosted the first UK show by Brazilian visual artist Hélio Oiticica in 1969 and has shown many Brazilian and Mexican artists over the years). With Brazil such a powerhouse at the moment the timing of the new show seems doubly resonant.

Blazwick was introduced to the work of Milhazes at Tate Modern when the artist was commissioned to create a mural at the end of level 7. “It was sensational and spanned the width of the building," she says. "It’s absolutely extraordinary - a very immersive environment.

“The natural environment is omnipresent in Rio. It's on the sea, there's rainforest all around it but there’s also a darkness and an edginess and poverty. Beatriz's work absorbs and celebrates that as well. She looks at traditional forms you might find in church interiors or peasant fabrics, love of lace and decoration and the excess of Carnival where the super poor become kings and queen for a day - or a week as it happens. You get these amazing head dresses festooned with glitter false eyelashes and all the rest of it. It’s very sparkly, very bling and about a conspicuous display of wealth and she draws that into her work. So there are all these different kinds of influences and an acknowledgement of the darkness of it and the oppressive nature of it.”

Beatriz Milhazes, Noite de Verão (Summer night) (2006)

Eagle-eyed Phaidon readers might also spot the influence of Bridget Riley in some of Milhazes’ pieces from around 2003.

“There’s no European art visible in Brazil - no Matisses none of that great early foundational stuff that we’re accustomed to,” said Blazwick. “She only saw it in reproductions when she was at art school, books and magazines. Then the first time she went to New York she saw show by Bridget Riley and Sonia Delaunay. For her it wasn’t a trajectory across the 20th century from Delaunay in 1906 to Riley in 2000 - she saw them in the same time frame and they blew her away. The two bodies of work were profoundly affecting for her. And she discovered the stripe!”

At the time, Milhazes was already pursuing an idea of revolving forms where the viewer’s eye can never rest. “She wants this idea of a very dynamic pictorial surface,” continues Blazwick, “where that idea of revolution on every level is this idea of never having a beginning or an end or a centre. She talks about the eye being constantly drawn back and forth across the surface of her images. And she uses abstract geometry to give it a perspectival depth. She uses what the vertical and horizontal can give in sense of creating a sense of space, of layering of things seen through other things.”

Beatriz Milhazes: Screenprints 1996-2011runs from December 3 – February 28, 2012

Portrait of Beatriz Milhazes by Luis Gomes (2007)