Description: Ana Mercedes Hoyos is one of the most outstanding figures in contemporary Colombian and Latin American art. Her work represents the maturity and development that Colombian art seems to have reached at the end of the twentieth century. This book -- with nearly 50 color plates and an introductory essay by art critic Eduardo Serrano -- is a collection of very special moments reached in her artistic life. It reveals her fresh reinterpretation of still life, an art genre she boldly redefines by focusing on a new, exotic subject: the splendid bowls of fruit sold on the beaches of the historic Colombian city of Cartagena by the black women from Palenque who carry them on their heads. For these women, this pile of fruit is a work tool whose composition reflects a vast accumulation of ancestral knowledge. In contrast to her traditional still lifes, these works reveal the mediation of photography, they are set out in the open, and they too are a testimony of the life, values and esthetic predilections of an ethnic group famous since Colonial times for its fierce spirit of independence. The astonishing freedom with which the artist rebels against the conventions of still life is a constant feature in her career. She first broke new ground and won international success with her incursions into "pop art" and "abstract art." Now, with the same tenacious, original spirit, she returns to a figurative style of tropical art, rich in color and dedicated to a reinterpretation of the striking visual world of the proud black women whom she portrays.

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