The well-known Colombian sculptor Fernando Botero has died

Fernando Botero, Colombian painter and sculptor, has diedthe president of Colombia, Gustavo Petros, announced today.

“Fernando Botero has died, the painter of our traditions and imperfections, the painter of our virtues”the Colombian president emphasized with his post on the X platform.

He did not provide details on the location of his death.

Fernando Botero, born in 1932 in Medellin, is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

He was particularly known for his personal style called Boterismo, which depicts people and objects in distorted and oversized dimensions.

Botero’s work includes portraits (usually group), landscapes and representations of still life or everyday scenes, committed to figurative painting and basically anthropocentric.

Although he is characterized as a figurative painter, his work is far from realism, rendering reality through massive dimensions of objects and hypertrophic, petite human forms.

This exaggeration, repeated in Botero’s work, is a key element of his particular and immediately recognizable styletogether with the purity in the rendering of the forms that refers to Renaissance art.

Botero depicted the entire spectrum of the Latin American petty bourgeoisie, rarely in her workplace, approaching her with sympathy, a feeling of solidarity and “love in every touch”, as he notes, capturing her usually in a climate of euphoria. The element of political and social sensitivity is not missing from his work.

The torture suffered by the Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prisonsin early 2003, they inspired him for a series of paintings that capture this fact.

His sculptures are inspired by several different sourceswith dominant influences from early Egyptian art and the anthropomorphic vessels and sculptures of pre-Columbian cultures.

They are often characterized by their gigantic dimensions and are mainly based on monochrome bronze, Botero’s favorite material. A key element for all of his sculptures is still the perfect execution and the smooth, smooth surfaces, an element that underlines the sensuality of the works.

Botero’s oversized sculptures go on public display for the first time in Florence’s Castello Belvederein 1991, and soon after at the Monte Carlo casino and the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

In 1993 he was the first artist whose sculptures were shown on Park Avenue in New York, while in 1999 thirty of his sculptures were exhibited in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, among works by Michelangelo and Cellini.

APE-SKAIGR