Fernando Botero Angulo - Roel Wijnants - Flickr, via Wikipedia.
Fernando Botero, the celebrated Colombian artist renowned for his globally recognized canvases adorned with plump, high-society individuals, and whose work paved the way for numerous Latin American artists, has passed away at the age of 91.
According to his daughter, Lina Botero, who spoke to the Colombian radio station Caracol, her father breathed his last in his Monaco residence on Friday, September 15, succumbing to a battle with pneumonia.
Botero's artworks featuring Colombian government figures and clergy have achieved worldwide acclaim. He once remarked that when he embarked on creating them in the 1950s, there was scarcely any similar artistry in his homeland. At the time, European modernist painting had yet to gain widespread recognition in Colombia.
His plump, rounded forms, characterized by ample arms, robust midsections, and substantial thighs, have unmistakably become synonymous with Botero's distinctive style. He proceeded to translate these corpulent figures into three-dimensional sculptures, occasionally placing them in public settings, where they loomed over onlookers.
Initially, critics engaged in debates about whether these figures were intended as satirical parodies, given the deliberately elusive political undertones in Botero's work.
"Botero's satire isn't heavy-handed, yet it is unequivocal, as his paintings ultimately function like dreams rather than mere caricatures," Peter Schjeldahl once observed. "There's something about his whimsical, fleshly monstrosities that feels intimate and familiar, a subtly unsettling reminder of the self in one of its primal forms." He predicted that Botero's art would ignite a "renaissance" in Latin American art.
Woman lying with fruit in Bamberg - Gerd Eichmann, via Wikipedia.
However, as the mid-2000s arrived and Botero's artistic repertoire expanded to encompass the ongoing conflict involving guerrilla factions in Colombia and the depiction of torture scenes from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, it became increasingly evident that his work held a more profound political resonance than some had previously recognized.
"You hear about these incidents, this violence, and it leaves a profound impact on you," he conveyed to the New York Times. "As an artist, you feel compelled to contemplate this harsh reality."
In contrast, the pieces that catapulted him to fame from the 1960s onward are considerably less overt in their social commentary. His 1967 masterpiece, "The Presidential Family," currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, portrays the Colombian leader of that era, alongside his spouse and other associates. They are situated amidst picturesque mountains, seemingly detached from the broader national context. In a Botero-esque touch, a figure resembling the artist himself can be spotted in the background, a nod reminiscent of Velázquez's inclusion of his own likeness in some of his works.
"Dancing in Colombia (1980)," a painting currently displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, carries even fewer layers of complexity. It captures the essence of two individuals swaying beneath an aloof band playing overhead. The presence of scattered cigarettes on the floor is the sole indication that the festivity endures.
Botero's oeuvre often engages in a rich dialogue with centuries of art history. Among his subjects are voluptuous women who meticulously dry their hair while gazing into mirrors, invoking a lineage of female nudes spanning countless years. Additionally, his plump madonnas and magnified figures draw inspiration from renowned Spanish art. In his portrayal of these figures with altered proportions, Botero simultaneously defies historical conventions while tenderly paying homage to them.
Fernando Botero, born in 1932 in Medellín, Colombia, had a childhood devoid of artistic exposure. In his own words, he recalled, "In my town were no museums, no galleries, no information about art whatsoever," as he shared in a 1985 interview with Ingrid Sischy of Artforum. "We had a painting of the Virgin Mary in the living room. That was it. The only other art I saw when I was a child were the pictures hanging in the church, which were from the colonial period. They were copies of European prints or paintings."
During his teenage years, he harbored aspirations of becoming a bullfighter and attended a school dedicated to this pursuit. It was during this time that he began creating watercolors and drawings inspired by the bullfighting scenes he witnessed. He showed some of these early works to a store owner in Medellín, who subsequently sold them. This experience served as a turning point for Botero, making him realize that a career in art was a viable path.
La mano Madrid, Paseo de la Castellana - Manuel González Olaechea, via Wikipedia.
At the age of 16, while attending a Catholic school in Medellín, he penned an article on Picasso, Cubism, and what he described as "the destruction of individualism in modern society," a concept he had encountered in Marxist literature. This intellectual exploration led to his expulsion from the school.
Three years later, Botero achieved a significant milestone by winning a national art prize worth $7,000. With this award, he embarked on a journey to Europe, where he would go on to study fresco-making and delve into art history in Florence during the early 1950s. His exposure to centuries' worth of European art proved to be a profound revelation, inspiring Botero to create a form of art that he believed was largely absent in Colombia.
In 1960, Fernando Botero made his way to New York City. The art he produced during this period was notably distinct from the prevailing Pop Art movement, which centered on depictions of consumer goods and commercialism. Botero's artistic vision continued to set him apart from the prevailing Western trends of the time. It wasn't until 1972 that he began to garner significant recognition in the city he would eventually call home.
While numerous pieces of Botero's artwork find homes in American museums, a substantial portion of his most significant works resides in the Botero Museum in Bogotá and the Museo de Antioquia. In 2000, he generously donated hundreds of pieces, both his own creations and those by other artists, to these institutions.
Botero's series of paintings inspired by the events at Abu Ghraib, which he commenced in 2005, have been hailed as a remarkable achievement in the later stages of his career. These works represent some of the most unflinching and visceral depictions of the violence inflicted by members of the US military upon detainees in Iraq. They feature close-up portrayals of bound and bloodied feet and hands, as well as stark imagery of dogs attacking naked prisoners. A significant number of these pieces are currently housed at the Berkeley Art Museum in California.
Critique of these works often acknowledges that while they may not attain the status of masterpieces, their significance remains undeniable. As noted by critic Roberta Smith, "They may not be masterpieces, but that may not matter. They are among Mr. Botero's best work, and in an art world where responses to the Iraq war have been scarce—whether literal or veiled—they stand out."
Botero consistently maintained that his artistic creations served as a form of protest, not solely against contemporary issues, but also as a protest against centuries of colonialism in Latin America. In his words from the Artforum interview, "I don't want to be colonized by anyone, to feel that Latin American art is being defined for me. Art should be independent. This is the commencement of genuine independence; only then can one attain independence in thought, in stance, in expression."
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli