Isabel De Obaldía

Panamanian, Born 1957
Photograph of a woman in dark clothing in front of a forest

Isabel De Obaldía was born in Washington D.C. in 1957 of French and Panamanian parents. She studied architecture at the University of Panama and drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before receiving a BFA in Graphic Design and Cinematography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1979. She has frequently attended The Pilchuck Glass School since 1987, where she has studied engraving and glass casting and has served as an International Council Member. In 1990 she received the John Hauberg Fellowship from Pilchuck.

De Obaldía has been selected on several occasions to participate as a guest artist in international painting, sculpture and glass symposia as well as survey shows of contemporary art. In 2002 she taught kiln casting at the Real Fábrica de Cristales de La Granja in San Idelfonso, Spain. She returned to La Granja as an artist in residence in 2003 and in the same year had solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte en Vidrio de Alcorcón in Madrid and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Panama. In 2006, she completed a fellowship at the Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville, NJ and returned there in 2007 and 2008 to cast large-scale works which are then shipped to Panama for polishing and engraving. In 2009, she won the Rakow Commission at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. From 2011-2012, De Obaldía had a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale titled Primordial: Paintings and Sculpture by Isabel De Obaldia. In 2015 she was invited to the International Glass Symposium in Novy Bor, Czech Republic, where she began to experiment with the mold blown glass technique. Along with her work in glass, De Obaldía has recently been creating animations and narrative short films, which have been shown in international film festivals. She lives and works in Panama. She has exhibited at Mary-Anne Martin|Fine Art since 1997.

Works by Isabel De Obaldía

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