Colombian artist Fernando Botero, whose sculptures and paintings of playful, rotund subjects in sometimes harrowing situations made him one of the world’s richest artists, has died at 91.
Heralded as South America’s answer to Picasso, Botero also tackled violence and political topics, including Colombia’s internal conflicts, as well as portraying daily life.
His works have featured in exhibitions across the world. His canvases and sculptures sell for more than US$2 million each, Sotheby’s has said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The artist’s bodacious subjects were portrayed in everyday situations — a corpulent naked woman lounging on a bed or a stout man riding a humorously out-sized horse — but served the artist’s more serious goal of transporting the reader to what he called a “superlative dimension,” where commonplace situations took on exaggerated proportions.
“Fernando Botero has died, the painter of our traditions and defects, the painter of our virtues. The painter of our violence and of peace,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Despite the comic plumpness of many of his creations, the artist never shied away from serious subject matter and insisted his pieces were not focused on body type.
“I don’t paint fat women,” the artist told Spain’s El Mundo newspaper in 2014. “No one believes me, but it’s true. What I do paint are volumes.”
Botero’s work sometimes focused on Colombia’s long-running internal conflict: He painted the aftermath of a car bomb and a group of party-goers menaced by men wielding automatic weapons and bloody machetes.
He also created tongue-in-cheek portraits of public figures and classic paintings with witty rehashings: his version of the Mona Lisa is notably bloated compared with Leonardo Da Vinci’s original.
However, it was his Abu Ghraib series which commanded global attention. The paintings, based on victim accounts and photographs taken of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, are explicit and harrowing.
The series was exhibited around the world, drawing tens of thousands of viewers. The New York Times said the paintings, while not masterpieces, “restore the prisoners’ dignity and humanity without diminishing their agony.”
Botero is survived by his wife Sophia Vari, two sons and a daughter.
Even into his eighties, the artist painted for a minimum of eight hours a day.
“I want to die painting,” he told Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper the year he turned 80.
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