by Rod Hughes

News you would never know unless you read The Tico Times Weekend section: In a dispatch datelined “Paris,” written by Caroline Vu Nguyen run recently in Central America’s leading English-language newspaper, readers learned that Costa Rican abstract artist Ana Wien is the newest toast of the Paris art world.

In the group show by the artist group, Artists & Life, that ended on June 28, her bright tropical colors were featured in four prominently displayed paintings that drew immediate attention, the paper reported. She also displayed her works in 2006 at the group’s first show at the prestigious Grande Arche de ka Defense building and later went on to the Galerie Figure in Paris’s posh Sixth District.

Indeed, she made a world-wide splash in 2005, gaining an honorable mention at Miami’s Women in Arts show and earning a second place in New York’s International Art Festival. In an interview with Nguyen, Wien acted still star-struck with the vitality of France’s love of art, noting that in a non-descript galerie near her hotel in Paris she found no fewer than three Chagals hanging.

She studied under famous Costa Rican artists Manuel de la Cruz Gonzalez and Francisco Amighetti. She said her emphasis on warm colors comes from the teachings of de la Cruz.