Coqui Calderón

Born in Panama 1937. Graduate of Rosemont College in Philadelphia as art major and history minor, studied in France, lived and worked in New York during the 1960ties and in Miami during the 1980ies. Since 1990 she returns to Panama. Other than painting she is an active promoter of the arts.

In the Panamanian pictorial panorama, Coqui Calderon has conquered a prominent position: she paints as a technical task of exploration and creativity that complexly evolves into succeeding phases; and, in a human analysis that has progressed through four decades, reveals a style reflective of her personal experience.

Her life has been dedicated to pictorial rationality, a mirror image of her journey through a profound analysis of her inner self. Initially figurative, she later becomes abstract, excelling in the mastery of composition with a marked emphasis on movement.

After her sojourn in Paris, and later in New York, movement emerges as the main characteristic of her work. From 1968 to 1980 she centers her activity in Panama. Later she moves to Miami, where during 1985-86 sh paints landscapes and still life in pastels and acrylics that in conjunction with their respective paper sketches enlighten her technical choice and enables the perception of the internal structure of her composition.

From 1985 to 1990 she makes a parenthesis in her theme to create a collection in acrylics and pastels that she titles "Protesta '85" ("Protest '85") and "Vientos de Furia" (Winds of Rage) which remain as a testimony of street demonstrations during the Panamanian crisis. In 1990 she returns to Panama where she resumes her thematic on the relationship between nature and human beings. An extremely painful loss provides a new dimension and questioning on human fragility and its environment.

In her latest painting we see the integration and strength of women in respect to nature, here, she is represented intertwined with woody vines of the tropical rain forest, a recurrent theme about the intimate relationship of the feminine figure surrounded nature or landscape as the center of interest of a complex composition.