Artistic Beginnings

Angela de Hoyos’ relationship to the visual arts can be argued to have predated her birth. Her mother, De Hoyos has shared, was herself a gifted painter, only giving up her practice in order to care for her children. Often credited as an early advocate of De Hoyos’ poetry, her mother’s art seems to have also influenced De Hoyos’ burgeoning artistic talent, as a young De Hoyos would go on to take courses at the San Antonio Art Institute and the Witte Museum. In 1948 De Hoyos’ pieces were featured publicly for the first time in the San Antonio River Art Show, where she was the only Mexican artist represented. These early works mainly consisted of oil portraiture and depicted sitters she knew intimately— such as herself or her sister. This self-portrait from 1950 typifies De Hoyos’ early portraiture in its soft diffusion of color and line, as well as the figure’s delicately rendered features.