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| Artist Fernando Botero speaks this morning at an event at the Botero Collection museum in Bogotá. |
Painter and sculptor Fernando Botero turned 80 today amidst celebrations across Colombia and in Mexico City.
Perhaps this is the year that the world will understand the Big Botero Question: Why does he create fat...er voluminous...subjects?
Botero has asserted over and over that his creations aren't really fat. They are, instead, 'voluminous', which may be a distinction without a difference. I've heard the artist say that it's his reality that's distorted, not his subjects. When one radio interviewer asked Botero whether he might one day create skinny subjects as a commentary on malnutrition, he rejected the idea, because his subjects aren't fat to start out with.
Botero has said that his admiration for an Italian Renaissance painter got him started with the voluminous theme. And, in a recent interview in
El Tiempo he said that growing up without a father might have motivated the artist to compensate by painting 'masculine' voluminous figures.
Perhaps the mystery will never be solved, which undoubtedly adds to the interest in Botero's work.
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| Passers-by read a display about Botero's life across the street from the Botero Museum in Bogotá's La Candelaria neighborhood. |
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| Botero comments about how some compare his work to that of novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Botero says that might be because both come from the same environment. Botero is from Medellin, while Garcia Marquez grew up on Colombia's Caribbean coast region and in Bogotá. |
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| Botero's youth: His father died at age 40, leaving the family in poverty. The artist, who as a teen dreamed of being a bullfighter but lacked the courage, got his start selling painting for two pesos each at bullfights. (How much would one of those bring today?) |
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| Bicyclists beside a fat man on a fat horse, near Bogotá's Central Cemetery. It is the only public Botero sculpture in Bogotá. |
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| A plaque commemorating Botero, a life-long bullfighting fan, in Bogotá's Plaza de Toros Santamaria. |
By Mike Ceaser, of
Bogotá Bike Tours
You could be forgiven for thinking that Fernando Botero, the Colombian artist known for creating, err, 'voluminous' figures had embraced everything Chinese, based on a walk across Plaza Bolivar these days. The plaza's southern end is populated by Botero-like fat female figures, but with Chinese features and much more dynamic poses.
The sculptures were displayed in London on exactly the 25th anniversary of the Chinese government's murder of hundreds or thousands of pro-democracy activists on Tiananmen Square. Similarly, here in Bogotá, they provide some superficial fun while the world seems to spin out of control around us.
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