The Big Art of Fernando Botero

Bogota’s spectacular art museums, more than 30 of them, show a side of Colombia not familiar to many people outside the country.  And the head of this cultural cartel is Fernando Botero.

Colombians affectionately refer to him as ‘the man who paints fat people’

Botero, like any other Colombian artist during the mid 1940s, had no access to the original works of the legendary painters, So , he decided to donate his private art collection to the city of Bogota.  And that’s how this museum his museum here was born.

The collection includes more than 123 of his own paintings, sculptures and drawings. As well as works by internationally renowned artists such as Salvador Dali, Henri de Toulouse-Latrec, Renoir and Max Beckman.

Botero’s art interprets his subjects from a Latin American standpoint.  He is considered  the most Colombian of Colombian artists.

His paintings and sculptures are noted for their exaggerated proportions and the corpulence of the human figures and animal figures. The ‘fat people’ are thought by critics to satirize the subjects and situations that Botero chooses to paint.

Born in Medellin., Botero, now aged 91, was isolated from the traditional art museums. He studied art in France as a teenager, Spain and  then Florence where he was influenced by the Italian masters.