English
Fernando Botero is a Colombian artist, whose pictures and sculptures feature characters that are fat, expressive and emphatic. His bright and colorful paintings are in part inspired by the aesthetics of top Latin artists like Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. However, his distinctive imagery has also been influenced by classical European painting, as Botero studied in Madrid, not in his home city Bogota. His works are peppered with references to great masterpieces that any avid observer with an affinity for art can discover.
This fall the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest devotes an extensive retrospective to Botero´s playful imagery, and includes his most iconic works of the last twenty years of his career, as well as new works. There are about 60 oil paintings and sculptures.
Under the simple title “Fernando Botero,” the exhibition, which opened on September 23rd and runs until January 2nd, 2011, seeks to showcase Botero as a representative figure in contemporary Latin American art and shed light on his pictorial and intellectual record.
The Colombian artist is undoubtedly one of the most important figures of Latin American modernity, whose work can be found in some of the most hallowed collections in Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy and, of course, Colombia. Thanks to the robust and exaggerated human forms that populate his paintings and made him internationally famous, he has been compared to Peter Paul Rubens, who, like Botero, had a weakness for human curves, especially feminine ones.
His work tells stories about his beloved home country with its colorful folklore and culture. In some of his paintings you can see Colombian flags, and other references which attest to his patriotism. If you do not want to miss out on the incredible imagination of Fernando Botero, I recommend renting apartments in Budapest, and visiting this fabulous exhibition.
?
