The Art of Fernando Botero

Man on a Horse

Adam and Eve

Museums are afraid to show works that reveal the truth. So claimed professor Peter Selz in a lecture inspired by the exhibition of Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s “Abu Ghraib” series organized by the center for Latin American Studies last spring. The university of California, Berkeley was the first public institution in the United States to show the powerful series. The approximately 100 drawings and oil paintings resulted from Botero’s shock and rage at what had happened at that Iraqi prison. As part of series of talks related to the exhibit, Selz examined Botero’s development as an artist in relation to topics of violence and considered the importance of the painting today.
Professor Selz began with a discussion of Botero’s artistic development. After winning second prize in the Salon de Artistas Colombianos in 1952, Botero used his winnings to travel to Europe to study the Old Masters. He began in Spain, copying the work of El Greco, Velazquez and Goya. In Florence, he studied the location of generously proportioned, verisimilar bodies in real spaces, focusing especially on the work of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca and the sensuality of Rubens. Botero then visited the Sistine ceiling in Rome before traveling to Mexico and turning to the famous muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, whose paintings of strong, powerful human figures were important to Botero’s own approach.
Though he often recreated his predecessors paintings, Botero did not always approach the originals reverentially. According to Selz, Botero considered the Mona Lisa more a part of pop culture that a work of art, as can be seen in “Mona Lisa age 12” painted in 1959. In the Colombian painter’s rendition of the famous work, he gives the subject a mischievous, almost deranged expression in place of the original’s calm smile. Botero’s compulsion to quote became a recurring theme throughout his career to cite only examples, he took on the oft-portrayed figure of Christ in “Ecce Homo” of 1967, painted an obese pear in 1976 in response to Rene Magritte’s “The Listening Room” and reinvented Titian’s “The Rape of Europa” in 1995, placing the subjects in a space that resembles a bullring. The clear note that sounded across these echoes of other’s work, giving them coherence, was Botero’s constant interest in rounded, solid, voluminous form.
By the turn of the millennium, Botero was known worldwide for his visual vocabulary based on sensual human shapes. Focusing on what Botero calls “poetic transformation,” Selz explained that the painter is interested in “the truth and in the authenticity of the painting as a painting, which is very different from verisimilitude.” He often works with universal themes, interpreted through particular, individual subject matter, such as city street in Latin America in “The Street” of 2000. Botero delight in the human from and paints with great sensuality.
In 1999 Botero began to focus on political themes and to depict violence in his paintings, seeing a moral necessity, according to Selz, in leaving testimony to the madness of war and violence. His painting “Massacre in Columbia of 1999” interprets a historical event and forefronts the individual pain and horror of violent death in a color scheme dominated by his customary bright pastels. Another painting from the same series. “The Earthquake,” portrays the crumbling of colonial architecture into rubble, in a world thrown off balance and ravaged by the unexpected. It is similar to “Massacre” with its cheerful palette in discord with the somber subject matter. Botero’s images of pain which hadn’t previously been a frequent topic of his work draw on a history of depictions of violence that includes Goya’s “Disasters of War” Paintings, the works of German artists such as Otto Dix during the interwar period and Picasso’s “Guernica.”
Botero’s “Man on a Horse” at the intersection of Wydown Boulevard and Hanley Road. The 11’6” tall bronze sculpture titled “Man on a Horse” This public art installation was made possible through the generosity of the Gateway Foundation, a private organization that fosters and supports cultural and artistic activities in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area. The foundation purchased the sculpture and is paying all costs associated with the installation of the sculpture, landscaping, maintenance and insurance. The Foundation entered into an agreement with the city of Clayton to loan the sculpture to the city on a long-term basis. Prior to Clayton, the sculpture to the city on a long-term basis. Prior to Clayton , the sculpture was on display in Venice and New York.
“Man on a Horse” , depicts a smooth, rotund, meticulously, formed and unclothed man and horse. In his paintings and sculpture, Botero appropriates themes from art history, which in this case is the traditional monumental equestrian statue. Unlike a traditional bronze horseman, however, “Man on a Horse” is commemorating a war hero or city father. Instead, with its disproportionate scale and lack of specific identity, it asks viewers to look at this traditional form in a new way.
IAdam and Eve Statues stand in the lobby of the Time Warner centers shop at Columbus Circle, one of world's most popular and sought after contemporary artists. The figures in the photo are represented as rotund forms and exaggerated proportions, a style for which Botero is known. Each statue stands about 20 feet tall, is nude and is cast in bronze. Born in Colombia in 1932, Botero became interested in painting at a very young age and has produced thousands of paintings; in the 1970s he began producing sculpture. With such a puritanical thread running through American society.
By combining Renaissance and Baroque painting techniques with the Colonialo tradition fo Latin America, Botero creates a fugurative painting style that is Universal in its appeal. He captures intimate moments in life. A woman bathing, a men’s card game or a famil posing for photograph, depicting plump, nonchalant figures in everyday scenes. In group scenes, the artist frequently teases the viewer by showing one nude female figure, which is reminiscent of the famous Manet painting, Luncheon of Grass.
In the world of Fernando Botero, roly-poly is king. Fat women, fat food, fat horses, fat generals, fat babies. They’ve all delighted admirers of Botero’s paintings and sculptures for more than a half century.
The Delaware Art Museum is presenting “The Baroque World of Fernando Botero” a major retrospective exhibition featuring 100 paintings, sculptures and drawings on view until june 8. Using a broad range of media, the artist has created a world of his own, one that is at once accessible and enigmatic.
“Botero’s brilliant colors and massive forms make you stand up and take notice immediately .” said Mary F. Holahan, curator of collectons and exhibitons at the Delaware Art Museum.
But then his paintings and drawings and sculptures take you through a more subtle range of emotions. Empathy, outrage, curiosity, and just plain good humor. The result is that you just keep wanting to come back to look again and again.