Anita Magsaysay-Ho : in praise of women / Alfredo Roces, with annotations on paintings by Anita Magsaysay-Ho.

This book is a celebration of the life and works of one of the best, most sought after and most admired Filipino painters. Alfredo Roces' inquiry into Anita Magsaysay-Ho's life and how it has shaped her artworks is at once lucid and compassionate. His elegant, poetic prose charts the development of an artist - form her childhood vacations in bucolic Zambales and early education in UP to her independent struggle in the US to perfect her craft and her pained longing for her homeland - and weaves all these intricately with his incisive studies of her paintings. Accompanying Roces' narrative are over 300 paintings by Anita Magsaysay-Ho, some of which are annotated by the painter herself with comments on technique or the story behind the painting. These annotations reveal a lot about the painter. At the center of Anita Magsaysay-Ho's life work is the figure of the Filipino woman -at work, in prayer, at the shoreline of a strange beach, in the middle of an intimate chat with a friend, at a dance. Both text and images celebrate the resilience of women in this rare collaboration of two great artists.