Lebanon - Figurative Prints

  “I paint portraits because I am obsessed with the beauty of close-up human faces. I have always spent hours watching faces from behind a camera with a good zoom, and I guess that i...

Fernando Botero (Colombian, b.1932) is celebrated for his painted and sculpted scenes featuring animals and figures with inflated proportions, reflecting the artist’s predilection for satire, caricature, and political commentary. Born in Medellin, Colombia, Botero began exhibiting his paintings there in 1948, and later worked as a set designer in Bogotá. In the 1950s, he traveled to several different European countries, including Spain, Italy, and France, to study the work of Renaissance and Baroque masters. He also traveled to Mexico to familiarize himself with the current Mexican avant-­‐garde. Botero became renowned for the varied source material he drew upon, from Colombian folk imagery to canonical works by Diego Velázquez, Pablo Picasso, and Francisco de Goya. In his depictions of contemporary Latin American life, he portrays the poverty and violence prevalent in Colombia in somber images, as well as in his iconic inflated figures, satiric images of Latin American presidents, first ladies, and government officials. A meeting with Dorothy Miller from The Museum of Modern Art in the early 1960s proved to be a turning point in his career; she acquired his work at a time when abstraction was the celebrated idiom, and he later exhibited his work in a major exhibition at the museum, solidifying his international reputation. In the 1970s, Botero moved to Paris, where he created large figural sculptures with his signature inflated forms. He remains engaged with images of his Latin American home city, and with overtly political imagery; his recent works include large paintings of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in a direct commentary on the war in Iraq. Botero has exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, the Maillol Museum in Paris, the Palazzo Benezia in Rome, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the National Museum in Bogotá. He currently lives and works in Paris, Montecarlo, and New York. 2012–2013 Museo Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain 2012 Una celebración, Palacio Bellas Artes de México, Mexico 2012 Hommage zum 80. Geburtstag, Botero -­‐ Gemälde, Skulpturen und Zeichnungen, Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld, Germany 2010 Art is deformation, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY (solo) Inaurgural Exhibition: Fernando Botero, David Benrimon Gallery, New York, NY (solo) Latinas!, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY 2009 Gary Nader Fine Art, Coral Gables, FL Fernando Botero: The Circus. James Goodman Gallery, New York, NY El Dolor de Colombia, Pinacoteca Diego Rivero, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico 2008 The Baroque World of Fernando Botero, Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE 2007–2008 Botero: Oeuvres récentes, Marlborough Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco (solo) 2007 Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib, University of California, Berkeley, CA (solo) The Baroque World of Fernando Botero, Musée National des Beaux-­‐Arts du Québec, Canada (solo) Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE (solo) New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA (solo) Summer Exhibition, Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY Latin Masters...

  “I paint portraits because I am obsessed with the beauty of close-up human faces. I have always spent hours watching faces from behind a camera with a good zoom, and I guess that i...