Isabel De Obaldia was born in Washington D.C. in 1957 of French and Panamanian parents. De Obaldia was raised in Panama, where her father, Guillermo Trujillo was a celebrated painter. She studied architecture at the University of Panama and drawing at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. She received her B.F.A. in Graphic Design and Cinematography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1979. She went on to study at the Art Students League in NYC in 1982. Since 1987 she started working with glass at the world-renowned Pilchuck Glass School.
In 2022 De Obaldia was invited to participate in the 58th Carnegie International, the longest-running North American exhibition of international art. Curated by Sohrab Mohebbi and titled Is it morning for you yet? the exhibition explores artists’ responses to the geopolitical imprint of the United States since 1945. A selection of her drawings from the ManiObras series from 1988 along with Por Panama la vida were exhibited, as well as her latest short documentary Diary 2020. The exhibition is on view through April 2, 2023 at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA
Dairy 2020 was also screened at the Chelsea Film Festival in NYC in October 2022
Wheaton Arts 2006
De Obaldia received the Creative Glass Center of America Fellowship at Wheaton Arts in 2006. She has gone back to Wheaton frequently to do her large scale sand castings. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Rakow Commission of the Corning Museum of Glass.
The Museum of Art of Ft. Lauderdale had a retrospective exhibition of her work “Primordial: Paintings and Sculpture by Isabel De Obaldia” from September 2011 through May 2012.
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.
In 2019 De Obaldia made Por Panamá la vida, a short personal documentary about the years living under the dictatorship of general Noriega. The documentary was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama in conjunction with ManiObras a series of paintings and drawings that De Obaldia had made between 1998 and 1999. The exhibition An invasion in 4 times, was made in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the US invasion of Panama.
the artist in her studio in Panama preparing for her Metates exhibitions 2013-2014