Two Years Without Botero: His Legacy Travels the World

His sculptures and paintings live on in museums and public spaces, keeping the Colombian master's artistic voice alive.

ON September 15, 2023, Colombia and the world lost Fernando Botero, one of the most emblematic painters and sculptors of contemporary Latin American art. Two years after his death, his legacy not only lives on, but also takes on new artistic, cultural, and symbolic dimensions.

Botero, master of an unmistakable style, a visual language centered on volume, exaggerated forms, the monumental, and the voluptuous. Two years after his death, his work has remained active in museums and cultural spaces around the world. For example, the late painter is currently being remembered with an exhibition of more than 80 works that will be held in four Asian nations, supported by the Botero Foundation.

The creator of iconic works that are part of the collective imagination, Botero began his artistic journey at a very young age. He gained a place on the international art scene when MoMA in New York decided to acquire his work "Mona Lisa at Twelve" (1959), a moment at which his fame and international career began to take off.

Botero is more than his paintings and sculptures: he is a symbol of identity, of Colombian pride. Many recognize him as someone who knew how to capture everyday life, landscapes, national contradictions, violence, and peace with a distinctive language. His work includes both joyful and critical episodes, social denunciations, and transformations of the country.

With more than 110 works, and curated by Lina Botero, the artist's daughter, and Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz, an expert on his work, the exhibition explores both the intense, prolific, and exceptional output that distinguished Botero, as well as his experimentation with the various techniques he mastered throughout his career. It includes his oil paintings, sculptures, pastels, watercolors, and pencil, sanguine, and charcoal drawings, demonstrating the richness, depth, and versatility of his work.

Meanwhile, in China, to commemorate 45 years of diplomatic relations with Colombia, the Guangdong Museum opened a magnificent Botero exhibition in July. Among the sculptures, paintings, and drawings on display until November 23, the collection includes works such as Self-Portrait (1975), After Velásquez (2005), and After Rafael, "La Florina" (2013).

This is Botero in Guangzhou: Fernando Botero Art Exhibition, featuring 87 pieces that, like his best paintings, combine weight, volume, and memory.

“The exhibition of Maestro Fernando Botero at the Guangdong Museum is of enormous importance. This prestigious museum, located in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China, surpassed only by Beijing and Shanghai, will showcase works of the highest quality and significance within the Colombian artist's artistic output,” said Fernando Botero Zea, his son, at the project presentation.

Beyond celebrating the relations between these two countries, the work of the Antioquian artist proposes a conversation to discover the human being behind the artist. This way, Chinese people will be able to see canvases, sculptures, and portraits never before seen together, revealing the artist's relationship, his fears, and his global growth.

Several of these pieces are unpublished, and many others, although known through catalogs or mentions, have never been exhibited in China. Among the most striking works is Family with Pets, a monumental oil painting measuring 2 by 1.74 meters, where nostalgia for the Medellín of his childhood is translated into robust figures looking leisurely, surrounded by dogs and cats that seem like guardians of memory.

Also featured is "Children Playing Soccer," a painting that has rarely left the painter's studio in Italy and evokes that mixture of tenderness and disorder that so fascinated Botero.
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