Artist:Fernando Botero

Fernando Botero was born on April 19, 1932 in Medellín, city in the Colombian Andes. When he was twelve, his uncle, an aficionado of bullfighting, enrolled him in a school for toreros which he attended for two years. The preferred themes of his first drawings were inspired by the world of bullfighting. Indeed, his first known work is a water-colour depicting a bullfighter. In 1948, he exhibited for the first time in his native city and began to work with “El Colombiano,” the main newspaper of Medellín, drawing the illustrations for their Sunday supplements. He then moved to Bogotá where he met several members of the Colombian cultural avant-garde including writer Jorge Zalamea, great friend of Garcia Lorca. In these years he was deeply influenced by the work of artists of the Mexican mural-painting school such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Sigueiros and José Clemente Orozco and painted large water-colours such as Woman Crying (1949) which particularly reveal the influence of Orozco. With the painting On the Coast (1952), he won the second prize at the IX Exhibition of Colombian Artists, organised at the National Library of Bogotá: with the 7,000 pesos in prize money, he departed for Europe. First leg, Spain. In Madrid, he enrolled at the Accademia San Fernando where he had the opportunity to work in close contact with the masterpieces on show at the Prado. His principal cultural referrals in this period were Goya, Vélasquez, Titian and Tintoretto. He rounded off his finances by painting copies of famous works for tourists. After a year’s stay in Madrid, he departed for Paris and moved into a small apartment on the Place des Vosges. Deeply disillusioned by the French avant-garde, Botero spent all his time at the Louvre, studying the old Masters.