Acuarela (Watercolor)

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Ana Mercedes Hoyos (1942-2014) pursued studies in Visual Arts both at the Universidad Nacional de Bogotá and the Universidad de Los Andes, where she met figures like Marta Traba and Juan Antonio Roda. Hoyos withdrew from her studies before obtaining a degree and decided instead to focus on developing a prolific career in painting and sculpture, highlighting Colombia’s nature and society. Before becoming famous for her still-life and portraits, Hoyos pursued a dedicated study of color and forms that placed her amongst a generation of modern Latin American artists influenced by abstract and expressionist aesthetics, materialized in the painting of windows and landscapes which led to her first solo exhibitions in the 1970s.
This work is almost academic in nature. Although its title seems to indicate that it is a sort of watercolor chart, Hoyos assembles a large paper cut-out with two distinctive printed rectangles on the bottom, displaying a mastering of whites. Reminiscent at times of the work by Mark Rothko, Hoyos subsumes the objects of “Acuarela” within a neat geometry, while challenging the concepts of the signified and the signifier.