Ana Mercedes Hoyos (Bogotá, Colombia, 1942–2014) was a prominent figure in Colombian and Latin American art during the second half of the 20th century. Over a career spanning five decades, her work moved between Pop Art, abstraction, Minimalism, and figuration, developing a distinctive visual language shaped by her exploration of color, light, and Colombian cultural identity.

Hoyos studied Fine Arts at Universidad de los Andes, where she studied under influential art critic Marta Traba, and later continued her education at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. During the 1960s, her encounter with Pop Art and other international artistic movements contributed to the development of her early pictorial investigations.

At the end of the decade, she began her Ventanas (Windows) series, exploring geometry, space, and the relationship between interior and exterior. This investigation evolved into Atmósferas (Atmospheres), a series closely associated with Minimalist abstraction in which she progressively reduced form and color. In 1978, a work from this series received first prize at Colombia’s Salón Nacional de Artistas.

Ana Mercedes Hoyos later returned to figuration, developing still lifes inspired by both the Western pictorial tradition and the landscape and visual culture of the Colombian Caribbean. This exploration eventually led to one of the most recognizable bodies of work in her career: the Palenqueras.

Through her engagement with San Basilio de Palenque and Afro-Colombian communities of the Caribbean, Hoyos made tropical fruits, vibrant colors, and Palenquera women central elements of her visual universe. Through these works, she explored identity, memory, African heritage, and cultural resistance, combining elements derived from Pop Art with an extensive investigation into Palenque’s social and cultural context.

Ana Mercedes Hoyos’s artworks are held in public and private collections in Colombia and internationally. Her ability to move between abstraction and figuration while developing an iconography deeply connected to the Caribbean and Afro-Colombian culture established her as an essential figure in 20th-century Colombian art.