Fernando Botero (born 1932)

Master painter and sculptor Fernando Botero hails from a humble background in Medellín, Colombia. Of all living Latin Amerian artists, he is the most popular. Edward Lucie-Smith, in his book "Latin American Art of the 20th Century," calls Botero a highly original creator. Botero is the recipient of countless awards and his works are displayed in many of the major galleries and museums around the world. He had his first exhibition in 1951 at the Leo Matiz Gallery in Bogota, Colombia. He studied in Madrid at the San Fernando Academy and in Florence, where he learned the fresco techniques of the Italian masters. It would be some time (early 1960s) before Botero evolved his characteristic manner, the rotund figures, for which he is so well known.

In 1956 he taught at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Bogota and travelled to Mexico to study the work of Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. In 1957 he exhibited at the Pan American Union Washington, D.C. In New York, during the 1960s, he developed a form of figurative painting based on Renaissance and Baroque masters and the colonial traditions of Latin America. In 1969 the Inflated Images Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York established him as one of the masters of the Twentieth century. These rotund images are considered satirical. At first glance, humorous, the works reflect social commentary with political overtones, condemning militarists and people of power and the morals and manners of the bourgeoisie.

Fernando Botero (Abb. Archiv WAEPART)

Since 1972 he has had individual exhibitions at the Marlborough Gallery in New York, the Buchholz Gallery in Munich and the Claude Bernard Gallery in Paris.

In 1992, Fernando Botero was honored with an exhibition of his sculpture along the Champs Elysees, making him the first non-French artist to exhibit at this venue. This outdoor exhibition travelled, among other places, to New York, Chicago, and Buenos Aires. In addition, Botero has been honored with an individual exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris.


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