Fresh off the inauguration of its expanded New York HQ last fall, Pace Gallery has been adding new artists at a rapid… pace. The latest one is a high-profile get: Brazilian painter and sculptor Beatriz Milhazes, who has been represented in New York by Jame Cohan since the early 2000s. She also happens to be one of the top-selling female artists alive.
Born in 1960, Milhazes got her start with the Geração 80 (’80s Generation) in her native country. She has become known for her colorful abstract work, featuring curlicues and geometric forms often created with her signature monotransfer technique, in which she transfers painted designs from plastic sheets to canvas.
According to the Artnet Price Database, Milhazes’s auction high, achieved at Sotheby’s New York in 2012, is just over $2 million. She has ten other recorded auction sales of $1 million or more, which places her among the best-selling living female artists at auction. (Unlike in most countries, including the United States, women have long dominated the art market in Brazil, comprising the majority of its list of top-selling creators.)
“Having known Beatriz for well over a decade, it is an honor to welcome her to the Pace family,” said Pace vice president Adam Sheffer in a statement, “Her singular vision and driven engagement with painting continues Pace’s historic lineage of painters that have expanded and radically altered the landscape of the medium, such as Jean Dubuffet, David Hockney, Agnes Martin, Elizabeth Murray, and Robert Ryman.”
Beatriz Milhazes, Bala de leite em roxo e azul ultramar (2017). ©Beatriz Milhazes.
Pace opened its massive new eight-story flagship in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood in September, expanding its physical footprint with the museum-like space. (It also has locations in London, Hong Kong, Geneva, Seoul, and Palo Alto, California.) Over the past year or so, the gallery has added art-world veterans such as Light and Space pioneer Mary Corse—who was with Lehmann Maupin until December 2018—and abstract painter Sam Gilliam, who signed on in June, having never before had a New York gallery.
Other new additions to the roster include John Gerrard, formerly of New York’s Simon Preston Gallery, who joined in September, after Preston became a senior director at Pace.
Beatriz Milhazes. Photo by Vicente de Paulo, courtesy of the artist.
The addition of Milhazes comes ahead of her major three-venue survey in São Paulo, set to open at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the Itaú Cultural space, and the Casa de Vidro in December. The artist enjoyed her first North American retrospective, “Beatriz Milhazes: Jardim Botânica,” at Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2014.
“We wish Beatriz well on this new phase in her career, as we have the utmost admiration for her as gallerists and most importantly as friends,” said James and Jane Cohan in an email to Artnet News.
Outside of New York, Milhazes will continue to be represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in Brazil and Lisbon; Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin, Paris, and London; and White Cube in London and Hong Kong.