"Art is all about bringing happiness to people"
When you think of Columbia, what comes to mind? Maybe it's drug lords, kidnappings and violence, or maybe it's Márquez and his One Hundred Years of Solitude. But if we are willing to draw our gaze back from the river of history back to the more realistic present, we will find that in a way, the artist Fernando Botero may be more able to embody the glory and faith of contemporary Colombia.
Fernando Botero Painting: The Street (1995). Botero's painting was originally inspired by Medellín (one of Colombia's cities), but the street in the painting is also a microcosm of many towns in Latin America.
At the end of last month, the artist's documentary "Botero" was released in Taiwan. While Botero's name isn't familiar to most people, you've seen the round, chubby, strange world he created.
Group photo of Fernando Botero with his painting Menina (after Velazquez), 1991. This work is a reinterpretation of the famous Spanish painter Velázquez's painting Las Meninas.
01
The "failed" matador
In 1932, Fernando Botero was born in a small town in the city of Medellín. As Colombia's second largest city, unlike the capital Bogotá, where the sky is gloomy and precipitation is frequent, the city of Medellín is full of spring all year round, and the Medellín River runs through the city and flows northward, silently nourishing the residents here. Of course, the city's greatest fame comes from the Medellín Group, which was notorious for drug trafficking in the last century, and the bloody storms it has experienced.
Pablo Escobar muerto (2006), a painting by Fernando Potro for a drug dealer who died in Medellín on 2 December 1993, Pablo Escobar is the name of a drug dealer who hopes to leave behind a brutal historical memory of Colombia.
Botero grew up in an environment of violence, crime and hardship. There, money was an important measure of success, so he grew up with an extremely keen understanding of the boundaries between generosity and poverty. Many years later, Botero recalled those days, saying, "When you are destitute, you find that life is like an extraordinary adventure." ”
When he was 4 years old, his father, a salesman, died of a heart attack. Relatives helped their widowed mother to cover little Botero's tuition and other expenses. And his uncle played a crucial role in many important scenes. At the age of 12, Botero was sent to a school that specialized in training matadors — a shortcut to overnight fame in Spanish-speaking countries. But soon his uncle discovered that his nephew was clearly more adept at painting bulls than fighting bulls.
Afarolado (1983), bullfighting is one of the important subjects in the paintings of Fernando Botero. "The reason I love drawing it is because bullfighting scenes contain color, movement and absurdity," Botero said. ”
Botero's first works, a stack of watercolors depicting matadors and bulls, were later sold to a local vendor peddling bullfighting tickets. So he always laughed at himself: "I worked in the artist industry only because I didn't become a good bullfighter." ”
02
Ferry tickets to Europe
In 1948, at the age of 16, Botero published an illustration in The Columbian, one of Medellín's local newspapers, which allowed him to save a sum of money. Soon, he moved to Madrid to study at the San Fernando School of Art. Like many students, Botero makes a living by copying paintings on display at the Prado Museum in his free time and then selling his own drawings and other paintings around the neighborhood.
Stills from the documentary Botero. Young Fernando Botero with his painting Young Girl (1962).
Before that, in his young life, he had never been stimulated by any cultural stimulation from the outside world. His world existed in the town called Medellín, and the scene of his young life had survived a long period of time and still survived intact. Botero once described himself this way: "I am an artist born in the third world. In other words, I didn't grow up around a museum or in some established tradition of art. So from the very beginning, I was approaching and seeing the world in a whole new light. ”
A Family (1997), family is also one of Botero's creative motifs. Botero depicts a middle-class colombian family who uses family themes to trace his origins, memories, and experiences.
At the age of 20, Botero won second prize in an art competition. He exchanged the prize money for a ferry ticket to Europe, traveling with a group of artists. He started with Spain, home to some of the best art galleries in the world, with thousands of precious works. Botero spent a lot of time copying the early paintings of the masters; then Paris, one of the oldest museums in the world, where the Louvre played a pivotal role in French and world culture; then Florence, where he was fascinated by the composition and brushwork used by Italian Renaissance artists...
Fernando Botero's painting when he was 20 years old: Portrait of a Young Indian (1952).
The study tour experience in Europe allowed Botero to face those original authentic works for the first time in his life. He found that painting was more complex and important than he realized. Thus, it was like polishing a match in the darkness, so that his understanding of art gained a momentary aura. Since then, Potro has become more sincere, eager, and resolutely devoted to artistic creation, groping for his own style and belief in the bumps along the way.
03
They're not
Inflated "fat man"
If the memory of Colombia gave him eternal inspiration, and the experiences of Spain and Italy inspired him, an inadvertent attempt in Mexico City ignited Botero's lifelong exploration of "volume."
After leaving Florence, Potro traveled to Mexico. Influenced by the Mexican "Three Masters of Mural Painting", he began to integrate real life and events into his paintings. On that day, Potro was drawing a sketch of a mandolin on which he drew a very small sound hole, and suddenly the proportions and volume of the instrument became exaggerated and interesting.
Top: Group photo of Fernando Botero and his series of paintings Circus. Botero's Circus series has nearly 200 works.
Bottom: Bodego n con mandolina (1957-1958).
Botero was thrilled with the fresh possibility. He felt as if he had opened a door and entered another room, where he had created his own Baroque style and continued it to this day. That's the full world we see—all the characters, still lifes, and everything around us with rounded lines, plump bodies, like inflated leather balls, reminiscent of Aunt Maggie in Harry Potter, who was magically transformed into a balloon, and Maupassant's depiction of lamb fat balls: the same smooth and taut skin, the same hooped out section by section, like a string of short sausage-like legs and forearms. Fresh in color, it is coveted and chased by people.
左：The Bathroom（1993）
右：Tribute to Bonnard
But that didn't give Botero a one-size-fits-all success. In fact, this playful style, known as "Boterismo," has exposed him to countless sharp criticisms and questions. In the 1960s, he moved to New York. Referring to that experience, Botero said in the documentary that he was like a "leper" who was afraid to avoid it. The New York Fashionista dismissed his gestures and brushstrokes, even denouncing him, believing that his work was entirely sensational, and that these exquisite "fat men" looked very frivolous and had no deep meaning.
However, Botero always claimed that he never painted a "fat man". His focus has always been on "volume". In this way, he depicts and reflects a variety of themes, such as reinterpreting the early paintings of the masters, recreating street scenes and family life in Latin America, and satirizing aristocratic or political figures... The exaggeration of "volume" allows him to more intuitively emphasize and highlight certain characteristics of things, thus increasing some influence.
Top: Fernando Botero with one of his paintings Abu Ghraib 46 (2005). This series depicts the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war by U.S. forces.
Part 2: Entombment of Christ / Entierro de Cristo (2010), a recreation of Caravaggio's painting The Entombment of Christ.
Botero has always believed that the real wealth of a painter lies in the influence he creates. Whenever the work reaches a wider audience and releases a powerful message, then he also gains a new and irreplaceable wealth.
After living in New York for 18 months, Botero experienced an encounter that changed his life. At that time, Dorothy Miller of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York went to visit a neighbor in Botero, who suggested that she meet with Botero. When she walked into his studio, she saw the Botero version of the Mona Lisa portrait—the artist fixed the Mona Lisa at the age of 12.
Fernando Botero Painting: Monalisa (1978).
The painting was later collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Soon, Botero's paintings swept the world, and the bright and rich color palette, unique and unprecedented style, let him quickly gain public attention, people for these lively and cute "fat people" to relish. "Some people think that if art is pleasurable, it's its depravity. It's ridiculous, art is all about bringing joy to people. ”
Botero is world-famous for his paintings, but he is also a sculptor. Those striking sculptures, like an extension of his two-dimensional works, are spread throughout New York, Paris, Barcelona and other places in a more significant and three-dimensional way, revealing to the world the uniqueness of this artist who can express his artistic ideas in a variety of media.
Top: Fernando Botero in sculpture studio, 2001. Photo by Pool Cochard /Merillon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Bottom: Fernando Botero sculpture in the center of the Botero Museum: Eva (1983)
04
Once a young man in the small town of Medellín
People always portray the things they know best, and they are rooted in the sporadic memories of a person's childhood and adolescence. For Botero, everything he had seen in Medellín and Colombia—men and women dressed in orthodox and even slightly stereotypical clothes, lavishly decorated Catholic churches and the crucified saints carved on the walls— the daily parades, picnics, bullfights, soldiers, dances, weddings, funerals—all flashed in his mind over the years.
The Street (2013), like other The Street paintings, is set in Colombia.
Despite settling in Paris, he seems to have nothing to do with any of the hipster movements in the international art world, calling himself "the colombian artist of the most Colombians". And this country also recognizes and appreciates Botero in its own way. In his hometown of Medellín, Botero's name is used to name local squares and streets; Bogotá has a Botero Museum with a collection of more than 100 of his works, including paintings, drawings and more.
Interior view of the Botero Museum. The painting in the center of the painting is the Fernando Botero painting The Studio (1990).
The infamous criminal group once planted bombs under a sculpture created by Botero to threaten Colombian authorities. Botero's son, then defense minister, flew from Bogotá to Medellin to investigate the bombing. When Botero learned of this, he donated another work, the Peace Dove, to his hometown, which was placed next to the fragment of the sculpture that had been destroyed by the explosion.
For Botero, the biggest benefit of being a well-known artist may be that he has enough money to do whatever he wants. Today, his properties are spread around the world, but he doesn't invest or vacation — homes that Are used by Botero as a venue for different forms of art.
Interior of Fernando Botero's studio in New York.
The parisian room is covered with large oil paintings, in which the artist paints; the residences in Monte Carlo and New York are where he paints watercolors and crayons; in Cihuatanio and Colombia, Botero is accustomed to making sketches; and the Tuscan sunshine has witnessed the birth of countless bronze sculptures... He always said that art is a different view of the same thing. These works of art, with different forms and media, are different means by which he tries to touch himself to more individuals.
As the documentary "Botero" says, a generous, romantic, humble person will never forget where he came from and what kind of person he wants to be. Fernando Botero, a man of true integrity and innocence. Perhaps art history will not pity him forever, and the ignorance and arrogance of critics will always accompany him, but Botero has never stopped walking towards the world and the crowds. He, like his work, is playful, passionate and authentic.
A group photo of Fernando Botero and his painting Menina (after Velazquez).
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