5 Artists representing Brazilian Girl Power

Is the picture of the macho Brazilian undeserved? In Brazil, it is the fairer sex who governs politics and is also at the top of contemporary art. The proof lies with five well-known female artists.

1. The Best of the Best

Beatriz Milhazes is a French artist who loves superimposing. Motifs, colors, materials: embroidery is mixed with painting, the organic lushness and floral tangles everywhere. We cannot say if the abstraction outweighs the ornamentation, but what is certain is that her work seduced the entire world: she is the queen of auctions among all Brazilian artists.

2. The Baroque

Adriana Varejão’s face resembles that of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”, and it must not be by pure chance. Her paintings have an authentic azulejos look. With a cool appearance, they reveal a completely baroque pleasure: they metamorphose and trick the eye. That is when a tiled sauna of a libertine or a slaughterhouse displayed as an innocent bathroom is put into perspective.

3. The Brute

Lucia Koch has a passion for architecture that places space, poor materials and aesthetics of Land Art at the center of her work. Her obsession with the favela doesn’t seem strange in her work. At her home, there is natural sublime light throughout, which gives a cathedral-like glimmer within cardboard boxes.

4. The (Tele)Visual

A lit television: that is what Fernanda Quinderé gives the viewer. The depth, the gradation and the strength of the color composition is reminiscent of Vasarely. But the artist draws from national imagery to give flesh to a personal optical art. “Christ the Redeemer” is reduced and pixelated, consumerism is criticized: it is not really a Brazilian small-screen soap opera.

5. The Naïve

From her childhood in the country of São Paulo Constancia Nery retained bucolic representations of its flavor and folklore. The workers in her paintings exude health and optimism. They offer a peaceful and colorful vision of the irrevocable link between a Brazilian and his land.

Thank you Jourdain Vannier for this article!