Medellin Colombia) – The Colombian painter and sculptor of voluptuous figures, Fernando Botero, died this Friday, September 15 at the age of 91. He was one of the most recognized Latin American artists in the world, who throughout his exceptional career defended the art of generosity through his works.
“I often think about death and I feel sorry for leaving this world and not being able to work anymore, because I have great pleasure in working,” the “master” had confided to AFP during an interview when he turned 80.
Botero was born on April 19, 1932 in Medellín, the second city of Colombia, nestled in the Andes in the northwest of the country. Son of a modest commercial agent, he began art early and against the opinion of his family. At the age of 15, he sold drawings on bullfighting themes at the doors of the La Macarena bullring.
“When I started, this was an exotic profession in Colombia, it was not accepted nor did I have any perspective. When I told my family that I was going to dedicate myself to painting, they responded: ‘Well, it’s fine, but we can’t give you support.’ I did it anyway and fortunately,” he said.
After a first exhibition in Bogotá in the 1950s, he left for Europe, passing through Spain, France and Italy, where he discovered classical art. His work was also influenced by the mural art of Mexico, where he would later settle.
But it was in the 1970s when his career took off, after meeting the director of the German museum in New York, Dietrich Malov, with whom he organized successful exhibitions. “I went from being a complete unknown, who didn’t even have a gallery in New York, to being contacted by the biggest dealers in the world,” Botero said.
The overflowing forms of his art, his trademark, had appeared as a revelation in 1957, with the piece ‘Still Life with Mandolin’. Then, by chance, he made a hole that was too small for that instrument and suddenly, “between the small detail and the generosity of the exterior line, a new dimension was created that was more volumetric, more monumental, more extravagant,” he explained. .
Fernando Botero, the most universal Colombian artist, famous throughout the world for his rotund and voluminous figures, has died at the age of 91. The famous painter, sculptor and draftsman died at his home in the principality of Monaco, where he was recovering after having suffered… pic.twitter.com/nOGZcJIxQ0
— The Art Club 🎨📷📚🖼🕍🎼 (@Arteymas_) September 15, 2023
With Botero, the adjective “fat” did not apply to his figures. In love with the Italian Renaissance, he proclaimed himself above all a “defender of volume” in modern art. His sculpture, also marked by gigantism, occupied a very important space in his career, developed largely in Pietrasanta (Tuscany, Italy).
He settled there, although in recent years he lived between Monaco and New York, where he had residences, and returned every January to his farm on the outskirts of Medellín.
“I would love to die without realizing it. On a plane would be ideal,” he confessed to Diners magazine in an interview for his 90th anniversary. According to the local press, he died affected by pneumonia.
Open-air art for everyone
The artist who said he never knew what he would paint the next day was inspired by the beauty, but also by the torments of his country, affected by an armed conflict of more than half a century. Thus, his work shows scenes of guerrillas, attacks and massacres.
In 1995 a bomb in the center of Medellín killed 23 people and partially destroyed one of his sculptures, El Pájaro, whose remains remain in place.
“The bird” and “The wounded bird”, witnesses of the violence experienced in the 90s in Medellín. Fernando Botero ❤️🇨🇴 pic.twitter.com/7l8J9vjhLF
— Jorge Villa Bluesky:@jurgenvilla.bsky.social (@Jurgenvilla) September 15, 2023
He stated that politics “is not the painter’s job,” although he made an exception with a series about the jailers of the American prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
Botero, the best-selling Latin American artist during his lifetime, broke his own record in 2022, when his sculpture Hombre a Caballo reached $4.3 million at a Christie’s auction.
He was also an important patron, with donations estimated at more than $200 million. The artist gave many of his works to the museums of Medellín and Bogotá, which in 2012 were declared assets of cultural interest by the government.
He was “the painter of our traditions and defects, the painter of our virtues. The painter of our violence and peace,” said the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, after his death.
Many of Botero’s works decorate parks and squares, as the artist claimed outdoor exhibitions as a “revolutionary approach” between art and its public. An idea that he premiered in 1992 in Paris, with an exhibition on the Champs Elysees, and that he later took to the grand canal of Venice and in front of the pyramids of Egypt. His characters with immense curves also landed in China in 2015, a dream come true, according to him.
Some of Fernando Botero’s sculptures throughout the planet:
– El Busto, Buenos Aires
– La Mano, Madrid
– El Gato, Barcelona
– The Bird, Singapore
– Horse, Dubai pic.twitter.com/qZBb0rlzsr— Apu Hernández (@bluchob) September 15, 2023
Married three times and widower of his last wife, the Greek sculptor Sophia Vari, who died in May, Botero suffered the grief of the death of one of his children, who was only four years old, after a traffic accident. Later, the involvement of another son in a corruption scandal.
His legacy, which includes more than 3,000 paintings and 300 sculptures, is shaped by his insatiable creative thirst. In recent years, in a feverish career, he worked 10 hours a day. The mere idea of giving up the brushes “terrifies me more than death,” she said.
#Fernando #Botero #art #generosity