Isabel De Obaldia

Isabel de Obaldia studied architecture at the University of Panama and drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris prior to graduating from RISD in 1979. She explored cinematography, graphic design, and painting before turning her attention to glass in 1987, when she began a transition to three-dimensional work after studying at the Pilchuck Glass School, founded by Dale Chihuly (RISD MFA 1967; faculty, 1968-73). In her small but unmistakably monumental work, opaque and luminescent colors are fused in the casting process, producing figural forms that evoke early Greek or pre-Columbian sculpture. Attracted to glass as "an analogy with the fragility of Man," she produces works like Espiritu Cautivo, in which a captive spirit is held prisoner by a transparent but weighty human form. By acquiring Espiritu Cautivo from the artist's recent one-person show in New York, the Museum has added the work of a contemporary glass sculptor to its renowned collection of modem Latin American art.