Sculpting and Politics10/8/2008 6:37:00 PM
Botero devoted himself to sculpting from 1975 to 1977, putting his painting temporarily on hold. He created 25 metal sculptures that began from sketches. The subjects were huge animals (including bulls), human torsos, reclining women, and massive objects, including a gigantic coffee pot. His sculpture was exhibited at the Paris Art Fair in 1977, the year he also began to paint again (he paid homage to Velasquez in paintings depicting the Infantas - Spanish or Portuguese princesses). His work continued to be shown in galleries worldwide. In 1983 he established a workshop in an area of Tuscany renowned for its metalworks, which allowed him to spend several months each year creating his increasingly large sculptures, which weighed an average of 3,000 pounds. He also revisited bullfighting as subject matter for his painting, aspiring to become the definitive artist on the subject.
Botero became disturbed that his birthplace, Medellin, had become associated with the drug-trafficking cartel run by Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Botero was said to be incensed that two of his paintings were discovered in Escobar's home after the druglord was killed in 1993. Despite Escobar's death, the violence continued in Medellin, and Botero was the target of a failed kidnapping in 1994.
In 1995 a guerrilla group blew up a sculpture of a dove, The Bird, that Bonero had donated to the city. The explosion occurred during a downtown street festival, and 23 people were killed while 200 others were wounded. When taking responsibility for the blast, the guerrillas called Botero a symbol of oppression. Botero cast a new dove for the plaza but insisted the remnants of the original remain so that the sculptures could represent peace and violence.
In 1996 Botero's son Fernando was convicted of accepting drug money to finance former Colombian President Ernesto Samper's campaign. Botero did not speak to his son for three years, but they later reconciled. In 2000, Botero began exhibiting paintings that reflected the violence in Colombia - images of massacres, torture, and car bombings, and one depicting Escobar's killing - a distinct departure from his usual domestic style. In a 2001 article in the Christian Science Monitor, Botero said, "Art should be an oasis, a…refuge from the hardness of life. But the Colombian drama is so out of proportion that today you can't ignore the violence, the thousands displaced and dead, the processions of coffins."
Gary Nader Art Center 10/8/2008 6:37:00 PMFrom GaryNader.com. Gary Nader fine art offers art lovers and collectors a full range of services to assist private clientele, corporations and museums with the acquisition or sale of Latin American, Modern and Contemporary art and with every aspect of the fastest growing market on the international scene.
The Gallery exhibits monthly, featuring established artists and the largest selection of works by Latin American Masters including paintings, sculpture, and drawings. Past one man shows featured Matta, Armando Morales, Mario Carreño, Agustin Cardenas, Fernando Botero, Julio Larraz, Wifredo Lam, Marc Chagall and Guillermo Muñoz Vera: more than 20 group shows brought together the works of the most important Latin American artists.
All shows are featured in hard cover books printed by Gary Nader Editions.
The New Contemporary Art Gallery: Gary Nader opened his second gallery Modern and Contemporary Art in 1999. In March 2004 he opened a third gallery Photography and Contemporary Photography.
El Colombiano 10/8/2008 6:34:00 PM
ernando Botero was born in Medellin, in the Colombian Andes, on April 19, 1932. His parents, David and Flora Angulo de Botero, had been raised in the remote highlands of the Andes. His father, a traveling salesman who journeyed on horseback to outlying areas of the city, died when Botero was four, and his mother supported the family as a seamstress.
The second of three boys, Botero attended a Jesuit secondary school on a scholarship starting at age 12. His uncle also enrolled him in matador school, which he attended for two years, and the images in his first drawings come from the world of bullfighting (a watercolor of a matador is his first known work). Until he discovered a book of modern art at the age of 15 he "didn't even know this thing called art existed," he says.
In 1948 Botero decided he wanted to become an artist and first exhibited his work in a joint show in his native town. He began working at El Colombiano, Medellin's leading newspaper, illustrating the Sunday magazine. At this time a period of civil unrest began in Colombia, and there was a low tolerance for nonconformity and radicalism. Some of Botero's teachers began to express disapproval of his work, and he received several warnings about nudity in his newspaper illustrations. In response he published an article called "Picasso and Nonconformity in Art" and was subsequently expelled from the school. He completed his secondary education at the Liceo de la Universidad de Antioquia in Medellin, graduating in 1950, and continued to publish articles on modern art.
Botero Quote10/8/2008 6:30:00 PM
"When Colombian children go to church they see all these Madonnas, so clean and perfect, and I think that they should. In South America china-like perfection is very much a part of the ideal toilet of beauty. More so even than the polychrome wood sculptures in Spain, Latin American sculptures look like porcelain. So, in contrast to Europe or North America, you connect the notions of art and beauty at a very early age. I grew up with the idea that art is beauty. All my life I've been trying to produce art that is beautiful to discover all the elements that go to make up visual perfection. When you come from my background you can’t be spoilt by beauty, because you've never really seen it. If you're born in Paris, say, you can see art everywhere, so by the time you come to create art yourself you’re spoilt – you're tired of beauty as such and want to do something else. With me it was quite different. I wasn't tired of beauty; I was hungering for it."