(b Chilibre, 16 Jan 1929). Panamanian sculptor and painter. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence (1949–54) and at the Real Academia Catalana de Bellas Artes de San Jorge in Barcelona (1955–60). On his return to Panama City he became the first professor of sculpture at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas from 1961 to 1964, and in 1964 he founded the Casa de la Escultura, a government-supported centre for the teaching and promotion of the fine arts which he continued to direct after it was renamed the Centro de Arte y Cultura. Arboleda exhibited often and established his reputation as a young man with academic works such as Serenity (marble, 1950; Panama City, Mus. A. Contemp.). Most of his work was figurative, but he later developed a more symbolic style and produced his most original sculptures on indigenous themes, as with the bronze head of a Chocó Indian entitled Under the Skin (1961; Panama City, R. Durán priv. col., see E. Wolfschoon: Las manifestaciones artísticas en Panamá, Panama City, 1983, p. 286), with which he won the Prix Georges Roudier at the Paris Biennale of 1961. Unlike his sculptures, Arboleda’s paintings tend to be mild, with light colours and diffused images of human figures or birds.