2023-09-15 14:51:30
The swiss Alberto Giacometti He put the art world on a diet with his filiform and stylized figures. And the Colombian Fernando Botero plagued him with obese, cellulite, size XXL beings, although he always denied being older. «I have never painted or sculpted a fat man or woman. Nobody believes me, but it’s true. He explained it like this: «I have always exalted volume, form. I started intuitively, when I was 15 or 16, to make these excessive figures. I was attracted to the violence of the form, the aggressiveness of the abundance, I don’t know why. Later, in Europe I discovered Quattrocento painting, the exaltation of the form of Italian painting… Then I rationalized the importance of volume, which I did intuitively. The interruption of volume in space in painting is the greatest revolution there has been. It did not exist before Giotto. Today there is a lot of flat painting, painters who do not believe in volume. I do believe”. The person who has best defined the sensual exaltation of his volume is Mario Vargas Llosa. “The quiet and sumptuous abundance.” To Botero it seemed like a very poetic expression: “There is an abundance in art, it seems that it is always excessive, in the color, in the form…”
Colombia, and the entire world, mourns Fernando Botero (Medellín, 1932), its most universal artist, who died at the age of 91, just four months after his wife, the painter and jewelry designer of Greek origin. Sophia Vari, Pure elegance. Botero died as he always wanted: working until the last breath of his life. In 2012, at 80 years old, he confessed that his aspiration was to stay alive. To be able to paint. “When this is over I won’t be able to do it anymore.”
Days ago he suffered pneumonia that forced him to enter a hospital in Monaco. He left on Thursday to recover at home, but it was not to be. It was his daughter Lina, curator of many of his exhibitions, who broke the sad news: “He had been in very poor health for five days because he had developed pneumonia. He died at the age of 91, he had an extraordinary life and he left at the right time. Shortly after, he was the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who wrote on social networks: «Fernando Botero, the painter of our traditions and defects, the painter of our virtues, has died. The painter of our violence and peace. Of the dove rejected a thousand times and placed on his throne a thousand times.
Hedonism and beauty
Exquisite, refined and elegant, with shapes and gestures that were more reminiscent of an opera divo than a visual artist, Botero lived in the places where we would all want to live, always surrounded by beauty: Tuscany, Greece, Paris, the Côte d’Azur. .. Married three times. Does he consider himself a hedonist, a dandy, a seducer? I asked him on one occasion, “No, not at all. At 80 years old I am not up for conquests. But beauty has always interested me. He started as a cartoonist for a newspaper in Medellín. At 18 he was an illustrator for the literary page of the newspaper ‘El Colombiano’. He made his first exhibition at the age of 19. He sold his first work to a lawyer: it was the head of a woman.
Despite having lived outside of Colombia for a long time (although he kept his house), he always felt one hundred percent Colombian. As a sign of his unconditional love for his country, he made two important donations to Bogotá and Medellín. He removed from his homes in Paris, New York and Pietrasanta (Italy) masterpieces that he had been acquiring over the last 25 years and removed paintings and sculptures that he kept in storage from Swiss banks. And he gave that immense legacy (more than 200 works) to his country. “With my donation I hope to have contributed a note of joy, optimism and hope.” But he put a clause: «The paintings may never leave the museum, under any circumstances. In Latin America, there is a danger that a president or an ambassador will say: send me some paintings to decorate my office. “That has already happened in Colombia and I don’t want it to happen to my collection.” The Bank of the Republic Museum. Botero Donation from Bogotá brings together 90 works from his collection, in addition to a hundred of his own pieces. In Medellín, his hometown, he houses another important group of works.
His wife, Sophia Vari, a painter and jewelry designer of Greek origin, died in May, just four months before him.
From a distance, Colombia always hurt him, just as Spain hurt Unamuno. «I fervently hope that the political situation improves and the peace process bears fruit. There is no ceasefire, sabotage, kidnapping continues… », he said. He knew very well what he was talking about. In the San Antonio Park in Medellín is Botero’s “Wounded Bird”, which exploded in an attack in 1995, in which 23 people died. It is not yet known whether it was in response to the arrest of the leader of a drug cartel or as a protest against the $800,000 cost of the sculpture of Botero, whose son was Minister of Defense in Colombia at the time. Next to him, “Bird of Peace”, given by Botero himself.
Art in vein
He loved art above all. «When I think of great art, I think of the great masters of painting and that thought guides me in my work. I know what beauty or absolute quality of art is, which is in the hands of ten artists in history. “They are lighthouses that guide me in my work.” Velázquez, Tiziano, Rubens, Michelangelo, Raphael… On his 75th birthday, seven galleries in Europe and America paid tribute to him with “Botero global.” “I don’t think any living artist has had so many exhibitions in so many diverse places,” he said. He always remained faithful to figuration, both in painting and sculpture. Among his most famous pictorial series, Latin America, religion and clergy, the circus, tributes to the masters of art, the bullfight, still lifes, Abu Ghraib… «I was impressed, like the entire world, by the revelation that the Americans were torturing in the same house where Saddam Hussein tortured. I felt terrible anger at the hypocrisy, because a country that presents itself as the model of compassion and defender of human rights could not do that. That double standard seemed terrible to me. “Because of that anger I started painting.” There were those who called him anti-American: “It is not being anti-American, but rather a human reaction of an artist against a crime.” He also made a series about violence in Colombia, but he did not want to become the “chronicler of misfortunes.” His works, he said, “always provoke a reaction. There is no indifference: either you hate them or they excite you.
In 1994 he exhibited 21 monumental sculptures on the Paseo de Recoletos in Madrid. He donated one to the city. And in 2020, the capital’s City Council showed a complete retrospective of six decades of work. It didn’t bother her that his work was so identifiable. You know he’s a league-high Botero. «It seems like an enormous achievement to have found a form of expression so different from everything. Few artists achieve it. He is not interested in artists like Koons or Hirst: “I know his works, because they are everywhere, but I am not interested in his works nor do I admire them.” Nor did the Guggenheim Bilbao escape his sharp darts: «It is a museum that was conceived as a monument to the architect, Gehry. “It is revolutionary architecture, but a practically impossible place to hold exhibitions.” In 1949 he made the set design for ‘Ardiente divino’, by Buero Vallejo, which José Tamayo directed in Medellín. He was then inspired by Magritte and Dalí. Many years later, he worked on the opera ‘La hija del Regimiento’, by Donizetti, at the Teatro de la Zarzuela.
Bullfighting was another of his great passions. She was one step away from wearing the light suit. While he was still a child he went to bullfights in Medellín, accompanied by a very fond uncle of his, who even went so far as to enroll him in a bullfighting school. «I lacked the courage. “I was the best at bullfighting, but I didn’t go beyond that.” He did not get to stand in front of a bull, but his experience helped him take the alternative in another artistic discipline – less dangerous, but just as exciting -: painting. His love of art came from his love of drawing bulls and bullfighters when he was in school. He felt devotion for Manolete: «he is the bullfighter who has moved me the most. I only saw him once, in Medellín, but he left me an unforgettable memory. He had never seen so much personality and presence in the square.
He was very critical of the ban on bullfighting in Catalonia. «It seems absurd and painful to me that they deprive so many people of a passion like this. Not only the bullfighters, who make a living from it, but also the public. This ban has much more to do with politics than reality itself. In Bogotá, the mayor also decided to ban bullfights. And in Ecuador they prohibited killing bulls. I do not know what is happening. We must respect people who have this passion, who employ many people and bring joy to people. It is a great cultural tradition: Manet, Goya, Picasso, Bacon painted the bullfight… It does not occur with football. There is no great art inspired by football. “It is a bad time for bullfighting, for art… For everything.”
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