Chong Neto, Manuel (1927–)

Manuel Chong Neto is a Panamanian artist. Chong Neto studied painting at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico (1963–1965). He began his professional career as a high school art teacher and, after 1970, he also taught at the Casa de la Esculptura, the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, and the National University.

A figurative artist, Chong Neto creates compositions characterized by formal balance and the contrast of darks and lights. His early renderings of human characters and urban landscapes show the influence of Mexican social realism. He is best known for the large, sensuous, and enigmatic woman who appears in most of his paintings. She is often accompanied by men, voyeurs, and symbolic birds or owls, as in his dramatic drawings series Poemas Eróticos (1976). In 1972 he won the first prize in the Concurso Xerox in Panama. He participated in several biennial exhibitions, including the Bienal de Arte Latinoamericano at the University of Eastern Tennessee (1970,) the Bienal Coltejar in Medellín, Colombia (1973), and the Bienal de São Paulo (1982). From 1970 to 1975 he was an art professor at the Escuela Naciónal de Artes Plásticas de Panamá, and from 1975 to 1985 he taught art at the University of Panama. He was a special invited guest for the 1991 Bienal de Cuenca, in Ecuador. In 1986 he retired from university life to paint in his studio in Panama City.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Artistas Panameños. Bogota: Biblioteca Luís-Ángel Arango del Banco de la República, 1973.

Oviero, R. "Chong Neto y el tema como pretexto estético," in La Prensa (Panama) (June 1982).

Kupfer, Mónica, ed. Manuel Chong Neto: Visión Retrospectiva, 1955–1985 (1986).

                                      Monica E. Kupfer