Coqui Calderon: a Pantheistic View of Nature: Panamanian painter and patron of the arts, Coqui Calderon explores the relationship of feminine figures with nature while expressing her own personal experiences.

• Author: Bianco, Adriana
• Position: Interview - Biography

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There's no longer any question that women have made an important contribution to the world of painting in Latin America. From Frida Kahlo's power of expression to Marta Minujin's bold creations, women have expressed their visions and have been part of the region's artistic movements.

The painter Coqui Calderón is a precursor of women's growing involvement in the plastic arts and is a sponsor of the arts in Panama.

The beautiful Central American country of Panama is a land marked by the crisscrossing and merging of seas, continents, and cultures. Geographically an isthmus, Panama was slated for use as a canal, and its separation into two parts creates an awareness of a "divided land-united world," a concept that all Panamanians carry in their thoughts and their hearts.

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Panama also has an artistic tradition passed down from pre-Hispanic culture and colonial times which, coupled with 20th century movements, has influenced Panamanian art and driven its development.

Calderón studied art at Rosemont College in the United States and pursued advanced studies at the Grande Chaumière in Paris. Upon her return to Panama in the 1950s, she launched her professional career.

She has developed her own style--short strokes of pastels, like bursts of movement--and is considered one of the Latin American women artists who best masters this technique, a technique that's not very widespread in the hemisphere and that she has reclaimed.

Her semi-figurative and semi-abstract style focuses on color, used primarily to reflect nature. This is evident in her series Paisaje Panamá: Las serranías de Coclé (Panamanian Landscape: The Mountains of Coclé) and Etapa mágica (Magical Phase).

In her works, nature is a Me-generating force, a symbol of fertility. Pantheistic philosophy, in which we are all part of nature and nature constitutes the whole, infuses her canvases. Thus represented are the symbolic union of man and woman with the natural world; the merger of human figures with nature; and in some paintings, the transformation of women into trees or birds.

She's also an artist with a deep interest in Panama's history, as can be seen in her Serie Panamá o ráfagas de cólera (Panama Series or Bursts of Rage), painted during General Noriega's administration and exhibited at the OAS Art Museum of the Americas, in Washington, DC.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Panama witnessed a veritable artistic boom: art...