The transformation of Medellín is inexorably linked to the work of Fernando Botero. It is difficult to imagine this city without its iconic sculptures, without the cat, the reclining woman, the Man on Horseback, the Gladiator or the Fat Lady. His works stand proudly in different squares of Medellín and also remember the wounds of the war, as the artist himself requested.
In 1995, when the city was living under drug bombs and an attack left the dove of peace that Botero had donated to the city half-destroyed, the artist asked to keep it like this, open and full of shrapnel. “I want the sculpture to remain as a memory of the imbecility and criminality of Colombia,” he said at the time.
Born in 1932 in a humble environment, Botero never left Medellín. Until the end of his days he was aware of the debates on the city model. Recently, when the current mayor, Daniel Quintero, decided to put up fences surrounding Plaza Botero, in front of the Museum of Antioquia, Botero sent a letter asking him to reconsider. “I have carefully followed the news about Plaza Botero, both those that talk about security problems, and the latter about its closure. For this reason, I want to express that my will has always been for this space to be for all citizens and for the Museum of Antioquia to be its main caretaker,” the artist expressed in a letter he sent to the director of the Museum and asked that it be transferred to Mayor’s office.
In 1997, when he was already a distinguished artist, Botero donated 23 of his sculptures to the city and began the construction of the Plaza that bears his surname, and which forever changed the image of Medellín. The space was always inhabited by sex workers and street dwellers and was inaugurated in 2002. The square then became the epicenter of the city’s culture and also of tourism. For years, sex workers, sculptures, and tourists and visitors who came to touch the tongue of the dog sculpture, the Gladiator’s member, coexisted there.
Gifts for Medellin
Newsletter
The analysis of current events and the best stories from Colombia, every week in your mailbox
RECEIVE THE
In addition to the plaza, Botero was a patron of museums. Botero always said that he owed his training as an artist to museums. In 2012, he donated the original Via Crucis paintings, the series that marks a transformation of the themes he had addressed since the 1950s. In it, he represents the injustice and abuse of power of contemporary man, a version of piety that makes one think of mothers mourning their murdered children and a crucified Christ in the middle of New York’s Central Park.
Although he was already a recognized artist in the world since 1966, Botero had a solo exhibition in Medellín that is remembered by many. In a nascent art room of the Piloto Public Library, the artist presented his work and the then promoter of the Zea Museum (today the Museum of Antioquia), Teresita de Santa María told him that they wanted to buy a painting from him “in installments or by club ( a form of checkbook payment used in the city). Botero burst out laughing and from there the first of several donations were made (he ended up giving 189 pieces in total), recalls María del Rosario Escobar, director of the Museum of Antioquia in the Distrito San Ignacio podcast. This is how the Ex Voto arrived, a work in which the artist is seen kneeling before a virgin surrounded by snakes, with a note: “If the Museum grows, more gifts will come to you.”
This was Botero for Medellín, a patron who shook it forever with his work. Today the people of Medellin dedicate seven days of mourning and pay tribute to her, but the gift is her work that survives in the squares and streets of the city.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and receive all the key information on current events in the country.
#Medellín #horseback #Fernando #Botero