Fernando Botero 2022

David Benrimon Fine Art is pleased to announce the exhibition Fernando Botero that will present a selection of paintings, sculpture and works on paper by the internationally renowned artist, in honor of the Maestro’s 90th birthday. Widely celebrated as Colombia’s most successful living artist, Botero’s oeuvre of satirical and gracefuls voluminous subjects spans over seventy years.

The exhibition focuses on works from Botero’s career that infuse art historical and contemporary references with his iconic “Boterismo” style. With exaggerated proportions and voluptuous figures, flat and bright color, and modest sensuality, Botero reimagines historical themes, mythological subjects and contemporary Latin American life. He playfully renders the reclining nude, Madonna and Child, and the Saint, as well as still life, family, dancers and society people. Botero’s figures are both inviting and enchanting, 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 art historical canon.

Alongside the exhibition, David Benrimon Fine Art will present Botero’s monumental Sphinx at 14th Street Square, in partnership with the New York City Department of Transportation’s Art Program and the Meatpacking District Management Association. With characteristic wit and joyous play of volumes, Botero interprets the classical creature with a head of a human, body of a lion and wings of a falcon, common to Egyptian, Greek, and Central Asian traditions. In his “Boterismo” exaggerated form, the astonishing eight-foot tall Sphinx looks down at the viewer below. The stature of the Sphinx marvels the imagination of the viewer and sets forth a powerful experience that can only be felt in its immediate presence. Botero’s sculptures have graced the public squares and main avenues of large metropolises on every continent. The Sphinx has been displayed worldwide, including Berlin, Medellín, and The Hauge, Netherlands.

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.