Fernando Botero (1932-2023)

View of Plaza Botero from the Metro Station in Medellin, Colombia in Smithsonian Magazine

Fernando Botero, who died earlier this week, was a very popular artist, whose paintings and sculpture were adored by many people — with the possible exception of art critics. His highly recognizable style involved depicting human and animal figures expanded beyond any naturalistic representation, but with an intriguing insight gained by making them large. After mentioning him yesterday, I wanted to see more images of his work, so I'm sharing them here.
 

Plaza Botgero in Medellin, Columbia. (Wikipedia)

Botero Sculpture (Source)

A story of a Botero sculpture in Medellin: 

“There is an eerie sculpture of Botero in the Parque San Antonio. It is his well-known bird sculpture in bronze, but there is massive damage to it. Vandalism, you think. But on June 10, 1995 a bomb was placed in or under the sculpture and exploded in the evening during a concert.  

 

“Around 23 people died, and a link was suspected to an arrest a day earlier of a leader of the Cali drug cartel. It was one of the many acts of violence in a city that had gotten used to it. Botero decided to leave the damaged sculpture in place, as an hommage to the deceased and a permanent place of remembrance. And he donated a new one, placed twenty metres apart, to illustrate the meaningless of violence.” (Source)

 

The damaged bird sculpture.

In contrast to the popularity of Botero’s seemingly cartoonish paintings, he was also a highly political and committed artist. Influenced by the muralists such as Diego Rivera, he often depicted the ordinary people of his native Columbia. His activism is reflected in several projects:

“In the 60s and 70s he produced a series of portraits of Latin American dictators in which the puffed-up size of the figures was a satirical reflection on their self-importance. Nor could he remain indifferent to the drug violence that made his home city at one time named the most dangerous in the world, especially when the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar dominated the trade. In 2004 Botero produced a series of paintings of him being hunted down and killed in 1993, as well as other scenes from the violence that gripped Colombia in the 90s. The most controversial of his more political works was the series he produced in 2004-05 of around 80 paintings and 100 drawings depicting the torture by US forces of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.” (source)

“Official Portrait of the Military Junta,” 1971.

Botero and his Work

From Botero obituary in the Guardian.

From Botero Obituary in the Washington Post.

 

From Botero Obituary on NPR

 

From Botero Obituary in the New York Times.

Blog post by mae sander.

Images as credited.

Shared with Sami’s Monday Murals.