"The author offers us analyzes that constitute a work of true archeology of the image. Marcos Hill questions the works "Tropical" by Anita Malfatti and "A Negra", by Tarsila do Amaral far beyond their plastic and pictorial qualities, carrying out a historical, sociological, anthropological and gender investigation that makes possible understanding and deconstruction of the place reserved by modern art for black women and mulattoes in Brazil. What contradictions are involved in a modern art that seeks not universalism, but primitive and original elements in order to sustain the formation of the Brazilian social imaginary? And above all, what did the anthropomorphized iconography of an edenic exaltation converge in the election of these figures as emblems of national identity? These are some questions that the author develops in order to make the book a fundamental study not only for the History of Art, but for the relativization of a univocal historiographic discourse."--Translation of back cover.