Dos Hermanas, 2018
Fernando Botero
Opera Gallery
Musicos , 2017
Fernando Botero
Opera Gallery
On September 15th, when news broke that Fernando Botero had died in his home in Monaco at the age of 91, the artist Rachel Stern, a dear friend of mine, recalled his importance to her: “When [I] was a kid and first started being made fun of for being fat, my mom showed me Botero’s work and told me that I got to be beautiful like a Botero painting.” As she was developing her own artistic voice as a photographer, Stern looked to Botero as a significant reference point: “His ability to be an artist who is as likely to be found at the Vatican or a mall, as likely to be perverted as wholesome—he was unflinching about including everything, all the stuff of life, on an even playing field.”
Botero’s work, singular in its style and depiction of voluptuous figures, earned the artist a rare celebrity among even those who paid little attention to the world of modern and contemporary art. His monumental bronze sculptures have graced major thoroughfares across the world, from Paris to New York, Miami to Madrid. In the span of his 50-year career, Botero became a household name, and one that had a broad influence on art and culture.
“He was adamant in his belief that art should belong to the public,” Fernando Botero Jr., his eldest son, told me over the phone from Colombia, where his father was being memorialized. “That’s why his sculptures were exhibited in many of the great cities of the world, where literally hundreds of millions of people could look at his artwork, touch his artwork, and be in communion with it.”
For Botero Jr., the iconic artist was a generous father who filled his children’s lives with creativity and a sense of wonder. When they were young, Botero was a struggling artist in New York, who had little to offer his family beyond his time and affection.
Sleeping Woman, 1999
Fernando Botero
Galerie Thomas
“When we were growing up, he was very poor,” Botero Jr. said. “He was a struggling artist in New York. But he made up for that with tremendous creativity. He would take us out along the streets and pick up pieces of garbage and then take them back to his studio and make toys with that garbage. With a piece of metal or wood he would make a sword, with a piece of aluminum he would make a shield, things like that. I always was deeply moved by that because I realized that he couldn’t afford anything else, but we didn’t care because we felt loved.”
His father’s career took a sharp turn in the 1960s and ’70s, when curator Dorothy Miller acquired Botero’s work for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and he subsequently began showing with Marlborough Gallery. Major public exhibitions—such as the invitation to exhibit on the Champs-Elysees in Paris—catapulted Botero into becoming a top-selling artist, commanding hundreds of thousands and even millions for his work. Botero Jr. noted the shift once he himself began traveling the world.
Donna seduta su cubo, 2006
Fernando Botero
Opera Gallery
Circus People, 2008
Fernando Botero
Opera Gallery
“When I got my first credit card, I was amazed to see anytime I would pay for something—maybe in New York, maybe in Miami, maybe in Bogota—people would say, ‘Are you by any chance related to the artist Fernando Botero?’ It made me understand that my father was a worldwide phenomenon, and was well known around the world as an artist that people were familiar with,” he said.
Protecting and defending his father’s legacy remains paramount to Botero Jr., who along with his siblings Lina and Juan Carlos has committed to uphold the artist’s name and work. In his long lifetime, Botero went from selling watercolors in the streets of Medellín to becoming one of the most recognizable artists on the planet. He continued to make work into his final days, leaving behind an unprecedented level of access to his work. As Botero’s children work to preserve this legacy, millions of people all over the world will benefit from Botero’s genius.
Bodegón con fruta, cuchillo y tetera frente a una ventana, 1998
Fernando Botero
Galería Duque Arango
Their efforts include tamping down on fake artworks that have circulated the market. They’re also committed to preserving their father’s legacy, which they herald as being one that is equally influential as it is philanthropic: Together, the siblings plan to preserve their father’s philanthropic endeavors, which has included making major donations of his work to a variety of Latin American institutions, while also ensuring that their father’s private collection makes its way around the world.
“It’s our intention to organize major exhibitions of his work around the world, so it can be enjoyed by the public,” Botero Jr. said.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/uA3lf1q
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