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Fernando Botero, born in 1932 in Medellin, Columbia, is one of the main representatives of Latin American art. Already at the end of
the 1950's he started to develop his distinctive personal style, with the human figure seen from all angles and situations, as his
main subject.
His figures, just as all his other subject matters, have a very particular form of expression, due to their exaggerated proportions.
In this way Botero emphasizes the sensual presence of his subject and adopts this technique to become his signature style.
Botero has an almost unparalleled thorough knowledge of art history and artistic tradition - from Piero della Francesca to Rubens
and Picasso. He is exploring, just like those artists before him, the relationship between the space of the picture plane to the
figures within it. Botero's paintings vibrate through the tension created between the exaggerated voluptuousness of the figures
and the radical reduction of their details at the same time.
After his first trials in sculpture in the early 1960's, Botero starts paying more and more attention to this medium after 1976
and rediscovers his main subjects: sensuous forms, handling of volumes and the need for technical perfection.
In 2005 he tackles the subject of torture - as experienced by Iraqi prisoners of war at the hands of US soldiers in Abu Ghraib - a
strong statement against injustice.
At the moment he is painting scenes from the circus - a series of dynamic, colour intensive oils and drawings, in which Botero's love
for live and form has been able to blossom fully.
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