Fernando Botero
1932-alive
Fernando Botero is as a man and artist from and of Colombia. This is the single most outstanding characteristic of his art. He paints often social commentaries on Colombian contemporary life with political overtones that may seem simply humorous at first glance. His distinctive style of robust, inflated forms with unexpected and amplified human forms is recognizable.
Fernando Botero was born in Medellin, Colombia in 1932. He became interested in painting at an early age. In 1950, he went to Europe, where he traveled to Spain, France and Italy to study the work of the old masters. In Madrid, while studying at the San Fernando Academy he copied Velazquez and Goya in the Prado.
In Florence, at the Academy of San Marco he studied fresco technique and art history. There he began experimenting with volumes by expanding the figures and compressing the space around them inspired primary by the Italian Renaissance.
He traveled to Mexico to study the Muralism of Rivera and Orozco. There, what he experienced greatly influenced his future direction as an artist. He introduced inflated forms, puffing up human body. He combined the regional - Colombian images of his childhood with the universal - works of art from the past.
Botero's smooth inflated shapes can also be related to fleshy figures of old master Peter Paul Rubens who he admires.
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