Manuel Chong Neto

Manuel Chong Neto is a Panamanian artist. The son of a Chinese man and Panamanian lady, he was born on November 16, 1927, in Panama City. He was an innate artists, drawing and painting since very young. At age 19 he became an arts teacher at the Girls' Lyceum of Panama, and kept teaching art for more than twenty five years. To him teaching was one of his greatest professional satisfactions, and a job the kept doing at many important high schools in Panama City until 1972.

In 1952, he entered the National School of Arts in Panama to conclude his formal studies in arts, and in 1965 he left Panama to specialize his skills at the National School of Arts of Mexico and at the Saint Charles Academy at Mexico City, one of the most important Art School in the region. At his staying in Mexico, he developed a great interest into the graphic arts, becoming one of the most important artists in these techniques.

While in Mexico, he also found his two great loves: Alma, his wife an inspiration, and the conception of the so called “chongnetian women”, beautiful and voluptuous, though refined females, that represent his ideal of the Latin-American sensuality. His gorditas (fat ladies) have become the most recognizable subjects of his work, sometimes very sophisticated, and others more obvious on exposing women’s erotic potential. In a significant number of art pieces, he makes these women to be accompanied by other characters, completing fully equilibrated and expressive compositions.

Above and beyond his gorditas, he is also very well recognized because of his Still Lifes and Urban Landscapes. For both genders, the compositions are frequently based on geometric forms that without extremely abstracting the objects, they keep their essence over the detail, giving his art a captivating climate with a subtle blur, enhancing a sensitive and inspiring sense to his paintings.

After returning to Panama, he went back teaching, at the National School of Arts of Panama, and at the School of Architecture of The University of Panama, where he retired in 1986. During all this time, and to the present, he permanently works at his studio in Panama City. He is considered one the most important and prolific artists in the history of Panamanian art.

Without any doubt, Chong Neto, has gained the respect not only of Panamanian public and critic, but also of the Latin-American art community, as it is demonstrated by having been invited to participate on the two most important and referential art endeavours promoted in the region at the end of the 20th century. In the nineteen nineties, the Union of Ibero-American States, promoted a collection of literary inserts in the newspapers distributed around more than thirty countries, of the most important writers of the region, each of them illustrated by artist of the highest recognition. For this collection Don Manuel made the drawings for the poems of Cuban José Martí. After that he was also asked to be part of an exhibition that traveled from Israel to Argentina, called Latinoamérica Pinta, also exposing the art of the most renowned painters of this side of the word.

Don Manuel's prolific life ended due to a stroke on May 23, 2010.

External links

• A Century of Painting in Panama
• and its Art of only a few Decades
• Biography (in Spanish)

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Name	Neto, Manuel Chong
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Date of birth	1927
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