David Benrimon Fine Art is pleased to announce our May exhibition, Botero, that will present a selection of paintings,works on paper, and bronze sculptures by the internationally acclaimed artist. Regarded as Colombia’s most successful living artist, Fernando Botero’s oeuvre of gracefully voluminous and satirical subjects spans over seven decades.

The exhibition focuses on Botero’s works on paper playfully reimagines the reclining nude, couples, historical figures, families, and society people through his iconic “Boterismo '' style. Each of the twelve works on paper feature the artist’s classic themes of contemporary life in Latin America, and historical references reimagined through Botero’s use of exaggerated proportions and voluptuous figures. The Maestro explores scenes from everyday life in Medellin in paintings such as ‘The Saint’, ‘Dos Hermanas’, and ‘Carnival’ with his use of flat, bright colors, and modest sensuality. The romantic quality of Botero’s bronze sculptures in comparison to these works perfectly summarizes his stance on volume, shape and proportion while referencing mythological scenes such as in ‘Leda e il cigno’. The artist's masterful rendering of his figures are both inviting and charming, and the overwhelming “roundness” of his characters, whether sculpted in bronze, painted on canvas, or drawn on paper, has solidified him as a legend in the historical art canon.

Born in Medellín in 1932, Botero attended school for matadors for several years, but recognized that his true passion was art. In 1952, Botero left Colombia for Spain and France before settling down in Florence, where he became acquainted with important Renaissance paintings and discovered techniques from a bygone era. Botero has exhibited extensively, including retrospectives at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, in 1980 and the Beaux-Arts Mons in Belgium in 2021. His work resides in major museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, and the Museo Botero in Bogotá which is dedicated to the artist.