Botero in LA catalogue by Jane Doe

BOTEROLA IN

Botero in his studio

BOTERO LA IN

TEXT BY

PETER SELZ P R O F E S S O R E M E R I T U S , T H E H I S T O RY O F A RT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

D R A W I N G S

P A I N T I N G S

S C U L P T U R E

SEPTEMBER 15 TO OCTOBER 30, 2010

Country Wedding, 2009 Oil on canvas 71 ¼ x 56 inches

Woman on a Bed, 2006 Charcoal and pastel on paper 11 5/16 x 14 7/8 inches

FERNANADO BOTERO

IN 1964, WHILE WORKING ON THE RETROSPECTIVE OF GIACOMETTI

at the Museum of Modern Art, the artist and I were sitting in a café in Paris, looking out of the window when Giacometti lifted his two index fingers to measure the dimension of a woman across the street. Seeing at this distance of about 40 feet, the outline of the figure appeared about as thin as it is in the paintings and sculptures of his post-Surrealist period. Giacometti worked constantly to find his vision of reality as does Fernando Botero, who painted a portrait of the Swiss artist in 1998—this was 22 years after Giacometti’s death—but Botero never works from models. He said at the time, “In a certain way I behave like him. The difference is that he stripped the flesh from the bones of his characters and scooped them out, whereas I enlarge their shapes.” Giacometti, of course, did more than “scoop out” his figures and there is an immense difference between an artist who was an essential part of the European patrimony and an artist coming into the art world as an outsider who had to assimilate this tradition from the outside. And this Botero did. Fernando Botero was born in 1932 in the remote and insular town of Medellín in Colombia. Like Giacometti’s birthplace, Stampa, in a deep Alpine valley, Medellín is surrounded by mountain ranges. Both artists, each in his unique way, transformed nature into an invented world with the purpose to create art in its newly created space. Art, by definition, is the artist’s interpretation of nature; in fact, Botero affirmed, “Deformation is the exact word. In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature.” And for Botero his unique plastic distortion became his personal style. Its calm and voluminous monumentality to which he refers to it as “sensual exuberance,” remained a constant that he employed, no matter what the subject.

There was not much art to be seen in Medellín. In his novels Gabriel Garcia Márquez describes places like this staunchly Catholic provincial city, which resembles European towns in the Middle Ages. Márquez, Nobel laureate in 1972, and Botero were the principal figures of Colombian culture in the 20th Century. The only art Botero could see as a child were the polychrome Virgin and saints in the Baroque churches, Colonial paintings and some pre-Columbian sculptures in the local museum. In books and magazines he discovered and studied reproductions of Renaissance paintings and even a painting from Picasso’s Blue Period, and at 16 he exhibited his own drawings. This was in 1948, the time of the bloody civil war, called “La Violencia,” which destroyed much of the country. A fine early Expressionist painting, Crying Woman (1949) testifies to his experience of this time of killing and many years later he was to return to the theme of La Violencia. In 1949, writing an essay about Picasso, he was expelled from school for writing about a Communist artist. He went to Bogotá, exhibited in the capital, was awarded a prize and travelled to Madrid, where he enrolled in the Academia de Bellas Artes San Fernando and studied paintings by Velázquez and Goya in the Prado. In Barcelona he was greatly moved by the medieval Catalan paintings at Montjuïc. Of course, he felt obligated to go to Paris, but did not care much about the art beyond the early Picasso. The post-War art he saw in Paris was not what this artist was looking for. This he found in the Quattrocento paintings in the Uffizi and in the frescoes of paintings in the churches of Florence: Giotto, Masaccio, Uccello, Castagno, and above all, Piero della Francesca. “In Arezzo I came upon the essence of Piero della Francesca’s classicism. The way in which this great artist achieved fullness of form, spatial organization, and perfect chromatic harmony astonished me…color married with form to transmute into an ideal abstraction.” It was this understanding of form projected into space which established his style, which has changed relatively little over time or with subject. Style, he felt, is like a conviction, and he cannot, or must not change his beliefs. In 1956, while in his mid-twenties, the artist moved to Mexico City where he studied the work of the great muralists, and it was there that he developed his unique style. The following year he was offered an exhibition at the PanAmerican Union in Washington, D.C., moved to New York in 1961, and a year later the Museum of Modern Art acquired his Mona Lisa, Age 12 (1959). I

recall seeing this canvas at the Acquisition Committee and we were all delighted by the satirical smirk of the little girl. In New York, where Abstract Expressionism was predominant, he animated his brushstroke, but soon went back to his smooth-textured surfaces for which he is known. The New York critics, hostile to both figurative art and to outlanders, had little use for his art. Some twenty years later, when he had a solo show at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, he recalled: “I was treated in the most horrible way. I never saw criticism so nasty, so personal. They called my paintings caricatures.” New York parochialism notwithstanding, the artist exhibited internationally, moved to Paris in the early ’70s and became part of the international avant-garde. Long before appropriation became a postmodern trope, he made his personal renditions of paintings by Van Eyck, Mantegna, Caravaggio, Titian, Rubens, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Dürer, among many others. He painted bishops and saints, apples and oranges, female and male nudes, horses and South American towns. Between 1999 and 2004 he produced a series of powerful political works, dealing with “La Violencia,” the great political terror, the destruction of the towns and cities in his native Colombia. He felt he had to make “record of the barbaric violence that is drowning the nation…a moral necessity to at least leave a testimony to that terrible madness.” Like other artists who depicted the horrors of war, going back to Callot and Goya, he faced the problem of aesthetics vs. politics: How can the artist paint pictures of horror? Botero addressed this paradox when he wrote: “My works really do not know hatred…When, for example, I begin to paint the image of a dictator, I have to love the pigments I use…Somehow there is the act of love. In painting hatred becomes love.” This is the way in which the viewer can understand Botero’s cycle of paintings and drawings of the Abu Ghraib torture. The artist was on a plane from New York to Paris when he read Seymour Hirsch’s article in The New Yorker relating the torture inflicted by the American military and the CIA on the victims who were incarcerated in the notorious prison in which Saddam Hussein had committed his own malicious acts. He spent the next 14 months in his Paris studio creating the paintings and drawings to express his outrage at the United States, once considered as a defender of human rights. In these paintings his corpulent bodies speak strongly as the

recipients of the severest physical punishments. There are shackled and piled human beings, blindfolded and urinated on by guards, who are kept anonymous; only the torturers’ gloved hands are visible. The torturers are hidden, perhaps to signify the concealment of the men at the highest level of the administration who certainly approved of these measures. The captives are made to wear bras and panties; broomsticks are forced into their anuses. They are also tied to prison bars, which serve as grids for these paintings. The poses of some of the prisoners also suggest the crucifixion which evokes Medieval and Renaissance iconography and is in keeping with Botero’s traditional style. This series, which critics have compared to Goya’s Disasters of War and Picasso’s Guernica, has been shown in important venues in Europe and America, is being donated by the artist to the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, where they were viewed by 15,000 people in the spring of 2007. Upon completion of the Abu Ghraib series, Botero resumed his former style and created a series of charming Circus paintings with hypertrophic people and animals. He also continued his work in sculpture, which the painter started as early as 1973, when he was in Pietrasanta, Italy where he has his pieces cast in bronze. His sculptures, substituting plasticity for color, are translations of his painting style into palpable three dimensions. Whether painting or sculpture, what is important for Botero is the volume suggested by form. These bronzes relate to modern sculptors, especially to the classical grandeur of Aristide Maillol’s women and to the women by Gaston Lachaise. Like the latter, Botero’s women fuse the voluptuous with the monumental. These sculptures are very different from avant-garde modernist work. When compared to 20th Century sculptors, who turned to animals as their subject—to Raymond DuchampVillon or Constantin Brancusi, for examples—we find a truly unique niche in Botero’s horses, cats and birds and also in his women. They seem to evoke ancient, primordial cultures. In his sculptures, as in some of his paintings, Botero has achieved a sense of the timeless. PETER SELZ • AUGUST 2008

Oranges, 2004 Oil on canvas 15 by 20 inches

RECENT WORK PAINTING THE ABU GHRAIB SERIES IN ACCUSATION against the barbarism and cruelty in the war in Iraq was for Fernando Botero an act of moral imperative, as the depiction of human cruelty had been for Goya when he created his etchings of the Disasters of War, or for Otto Dix, and his horrifying sardonic prints in response to his experience in the trenches in World War I or, close to our own time, Leon Golub’s depictions of mercenaries working for America’s covert operations in Central America. As early as the 1960s, Botero had commented on the brutality in his native country and in 1973 he produced a painting, called War, as a protest against the senseless killings in the Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. And prior to the all powerful Abu Ghraib paintings and drawings, there was the series of La Violencia. He has pointed out, however, that his works themselves do not know hatred, because, “in the act of painting hate turns to love... each brushstroke contains the love” of the work.

clockwise

La Toilette, 2006 Charcoal and pastel on paper 14 1/16 x 10 15/16 inches Musicians, 2006 Ink on paper 13 11/16 x 11 ½ inches Woman Undressing, 2006 Watercolor on paper 15 7/16 x 11 ¾ inches Still Life with Bananas, 2006 Watercolor on paper 15 ½ x 11 ¾ inches

His style, once it was established, does not change. An interview he had with Ana María Escallón in 1997 sheds much light on this issue: “Changing style,” he asserted, “is like changing convictions… and in order to change, the way of thinking has to change. One cannot relinquish what one believes, what has been done as a consequence of exploration...After the advent of the phenomenon of Picasso, who was a man of enormous capabilities and contradictions, everybody wanted to be like him. But Picasso is a special case. An exception. Now it remains to be seen whether his oeuvre will go down in history... In a century’s time perhaps the conclusion will be that his way was not a valid one nor his system appropriate."¹ And, after a brief experiment with gesture painting during his time in New York in the early ’60s, he obliterated any visible brushstroke, preferring smooth surface texture. It is drawing that was primary to his art, be it painting or sculpture. He would agree with J.-A.-D. Ingres that drawing is la probite de l’art, the soul of art. This exhibition includes three superb drawings of opulent female nudes, all drawn without a model, from the artist’s internalized, knowing imagination. To paraphrase the eminent art historian E.H.Gombrich, Botero sees what he paints rather than painting what he sees. In La Toilette, the woman applies lipstick to her mouth in an image which is reflected in a mirror, set at an angle on her night table. 11

The black smudge on that mirror is an enigmatic aspect of the work. He defined her body with a masterly contour of firm sensitivity. Again, it is the line, simultaneously tactile and sensuous, which defines the voluptuous body in Woman on a Bed. This woman is seen lying on her bed, with one hand on her breast, the other supporting her head. This is not an erotic Odalisque, but it is a woman overcome with sorrow. The watercolor Woman Undressing shows a large naked female from the back with a little cat looking at her from the pillow—Botero explained that his approach to art “is not the frenzied approach nor the fevered emotion, it is the classical air that transmits total sufficience and human grandeur.” Botero, like Picasso and many other 20th Century painters—Rouault, Léger, Kirchner, come to mind—often turned to the bullring and the circus for their subjects. The ringmaster, the stunt man, the clown, the harlequin, like the artist, belongs to no class and operates on the periphery of the social order. There is clearly nostalgia for the circus in Botero’s pictures. He recalls that as a child in Medellín he would go to the bullring two, three times a week and see the great matadors—Manolote, Lorenzo Garcia, Arruza, and others, and when many years later, he painted his version of Titian’s Rape of Europa, the magnificent canvas that hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Botero turned the Venetian’s idyllic landscape into a bullring. And instead of flying cupids we see the goddess mounting a raging animal in an arena. Botero painted a great many canvases in homage to painters of the European tradition: Piero della Francesca, Uccello, Leonardo, Velázquez, Mantegna, Dürer, Ingres, van Gogh, among others. He derived his unique style in confrontation with his European models. Octavio Paz in his acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize addressed this situation: “For us HispanoAmericans the real presence was not in our countries. The presence was a time which was experienced and lived by others, by Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans. It was the time of New York, Paris and London. This is where we had to go, to search for it there and then bring it home.” Botero adapting the lessons of European painting, looked to the Venetians and uses linen canvas, sizes it with glue and then paints with several layers of oil. In his paintings of the bullring, Botero’s sympathy was with the lowly banderillero rather than the heroic matador. In a painting, La Corrida (2002), we see a large bullring with the peones dressed for the occasion, holding their capes, while a ridiculous man, mounted on an armored horse is looking at the bull who stands in waiting. Similarly, in the current show, the watercolor 12

Family on a Beach, 2009 Oil on canvas 38 1/2 x 51 Âź inches

Circus Act, 2007 Watercolor and charcoal on paper 42 x 29 11/16 inches

Circus Act (2007) pictures the male and female not as joyful circus performers but as two individuals, looking at each other with blank expressions, separated by a pink circus rope. The delicate tonalities bring light into the original drawing. Botero had studied fresco painting for two years during his time in Florence, and feels that painting in watercolor is similar to fresco painting as no alterations are possible. The painting Harlequin with Guitar (2008) depicts a heavy-hearted clown, who quietly plucks his guitar. Indeed, there is a feeling of melancholy in many of his pictures which is also true of the almost surreal Circus Family, painted the same year. Botero often paints his women in a dominant position. Here she stands, large and solid as a rock. The man of the family, appearing like a male Odalisque, is lying below her on the ground. With a bewildered expression, he holds a doll, which could also be a Lilliputian girl. As is frequently seen in folk art, the artist often plays around with scales, using smaller magnitudes for less important personages. A child also hangs on to the mother’s broad shoulder who confronts a circus horse which, again is scaled down. This strange family occupies a small space in front of a circus trailer and round sandy hills are seen against a blue sky. Botero’s purposeful transformation of reality relates his work to Surrealism and he has also been referred to as a latter day “magic realist.” He has identified himself as a “post-abstract realist,” but his work has nothing to do with Photo-Realism which emerged in New York and California in the 1960s. A woman, seen frontally appears in Circus Girl in Her Trailer. She holds a frightened monkey in her arms and, as in the painting of the family, he placed another monkey with a curious expression in the lower left to anchor the composition with his curved tail. In contrast to the woman’s drab color vestment, the whole small room and the blanket on the bed are painted in orange and pink. “Color is basic in my work,” he asserted, “it illuminates the painting and, in the end the picture finds its resolution the moment the color is resolved.” In 2007 Botero produced Circus Woman in which the bright colors are indeed resolved. The painter must have enjoyed contrasting the flesh color of the lady’s thighs with her pitch black boots and the orange fringe on her leotard. This Rubensian woman with the green feather in her hair and her hands placed on her hefty hips is indeed a formidable presence. Drawing served as the structure of his work. The drawing of Musicians (2006), although parsimonious in size, is indeed a totally satisfying work

of art. In front of the musicians, the small woman not much taller than wide, announces their performance with outstretched arms. Dignified musicians are also pictured in the large oil Fin de Fiesta (2009). Here the musicians accompany all the actions in what seems like listless standard procedure. There is an underlying sense of irony in this, as in so many of his pictures. Here he also avoids color contrasts: most of the elements in the picture are painted in various modalities of red. Two guitar players, plucking their instruments to accompany the couple trying to have sex on their bed, while another couple is sitting in a non-erotic embrace—this is not the convivial gathering Botero recalled: “There was a red-light district in Medellín...It was an easy-going place; class-lines blurred in a sort of never-ending carnival, a permanent street party.” Family on a Beach (2009) is also painted in close color values: here mostly flesh-color and pink. Again, the woman, although seen only from the back, dominates the group. In front of her, a voluminous man is stretched out sleeping in the sun and a tiny child shares their blanket. There is no shadow in his paintings, because, he said, “Shadow is the enemy of color,” and “light is the color of the object itself…I would say that in my paintings there is an interior light that is like morning light.” A careful reading of Botero’s painting reveals an existential sense of loneliness. As in Antonioni’s films, there is no actual or emotional contact between the individuals in his paintings of families or group gatherings. In Family on a Couch (2009) the seated man, a vague expression in his face, holds the family dog. He and the half-nude sensual woman do not relate to each other, the young darkskinned girl approaches her father who pays no attention to her and the little boy on the couch just sits, looking out. We do not know whether this group is being watched by someone entering the room or by the viewer of the painting. Similarly the couple in Country Wedding (2009) dressed in appropriate attire, presumably posed for the requisite photographer, are simply a sturdy presence. As in so many of his paintings, his individuals seem to convey impassive solidity. In fact, they loom with a chiseled stasis, or what the famed connoisseur of Italian Renaissance painting Bernard Berenson had in mind when he wrote of the tactile values of the Florentines. Botero reaffirms this quality whether he paints personages or oranges. “I have never placed objects to observe to paint a still life. I have never worked from a model,” Botero says. “If I want to paint an orange, I prefer first to eat

Fin de Fiesta, 2009 Oil on Canvas 65 他 x 82 inches

the orange and then to paint it instead of placing it on a table.” This is very much in keeping with Friedrich Hegel’s aesthetic that “the painter does not simply show us what grapes (or oranges in this case) look like. That we already know from nature. The artist’s aim is to capture the ‘life’ of things.” Botero indeed conveys the orange’s essence in Oranges (2004) and, in a daring use of color, the painter sets the oranges against an orange wall, repeating the color of the fruit, so that the observer is indeed impacted with orange. The watercolor Still Life with Bananas (2006) does look as if the artist placed the pitcher, fruit, bottle and olives with great care on a round table to create the balanced rhythm of the composition before painting the still life in subdued colors of greys and beige. “All my life I have felt that I had something to say in sculpture. Then, one day, it was necessary to make a decision. To make sculpture I had to stop painting for several years,” he told the critic Andre Parinaud. He transformed his Paris studio into as sculptor’s workshop and, at first he made little bronze heads, then he worked with acrylic paste, and carved a Reclining Woman in marble in 1976. In the same year he also produced a delightful polychrome figure, Little Whore (1976). Standing in classical contrapposto, this friendly putita raises one hand and lifts her skirt with the other. Botero soon realized that bronze was to be his medium for sculpture and established a studio in Pietrasanta in Tuscany where he worked with the artisan craftsmen in their bronze foundries. We are more accustomed to see voluminous figures in sculpture than in painting and the public admired Botero’s bronze figures when they were placed in Venice, Madrid, Chicago and lined up along the Champs Élysées, and on the median on New York’s Park Avenue. The fullness of form in many of the sculptures by this “postabstract realist” recall the swollen amoebic abstract sculptures by Hans Arp. Seated Woman (2005) is all female volume. The play of light and shade, the reflections on the body, the nuanced modelling evoke a true sense of life. The somnolent, but seductive Reclining

Circus Girl in Her Trailer, 2008 Oil on canvas 53 ½ x 39 ½ inches

Woman (2010) again, conveys a sense of generative life. The sense of calm we see in Botero’s women informs his horses, both in his painting and sculpture; they are the solid work horses of South America that can carry weight. They stand solidly on the ground or they can be mounted by a rider. Compared to the equestrian figures by Marino Marini in which the rider is often in a precarious position, the vertical rider and the horizontal horse are in balanced equilibrium in Botero’s Man on Horse (2010). Two years earlier Botero had produced one of several versions of a riderless horse. This 2008 model is a solid and sturdy caballo cast in bronze with light reflecting from its black patina. Botero’s paintings do not easily fit into the framework of modernism. And they could hardly be called post-modern. Are they then retardataire? Only if we still believe that there is some progress in art. But, this determinist concept that history proceeds in an evolutionary or linear process has been rejected by most current thinkers. By the 1970s “modernism” had become the art of the establishment or, as the critic Kim Levin observed, “Modernism has gone out of style.” We are, instead, dealing with pluralist aesthetics in which no manner is dominant. Instead of just painting, sculpture and photography, there is now a wealth of art forms: Pop art, Video, Performance, Conceptual art, street art, installations, Land and Environmental art, among others. And while all this was going on, some of the leading painters—Bacon, Dubuffet, Kitaj, Guston and Lucien Freud, Anselm Kiefer, among others, have produced some of the most memorable art. Fernando Botero, it would seem, is in good company. PETER SELZ •

JUNE 2010

1 The Botero quotes in this text are from an interview of the artist with Ana María Escallón translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz and published in Botero (New York, Rizzoli, 1997).

Harlequin with Guitar, 2008 Oil on canvas 53 x 39 1/2 inches

two views

Reclining Woman, 2010 Bronze, edition of 6 22 1/2 inches long

Circus Woman, 2007 Oil on canvas 46 x 32 inches

two views

Seated Woman, 2005 Bronze, edition of 6 19 inches tall

BIOGRAPHY FERNANDO BOTERO WAS BORN ON APRIL 19, 1932 in Medellín, a region-

al center of industry and trade in the province of Antioquia, high up in the Colombian Andes. His father, David Botero (1895-1936) was a travelling salesman who used pack mules to visit outlying areas which were not accessible by any other means. At the time of his father’s death, Fernando was barely four years old. Like his father, Fernando’s mother, Flora Angulo de Botero (1898-1972), came from a small village in the Andes. 1938-1949 Fernando attended primary school and was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to continue his education at the Jesuit secondary school in Medellín. His uncle, a passionate devotee of bullfighting, sent him at age 12 to a school of tauromachy where he remained for the next two years. The bullring is the main subject of Fernando’s early drawings; his first recorded painting is a watercolor of a toreador. In 1948 Botero showed his work in public for the first time in Medellín in an exhibition of artists from the providence of Antioquia. At age 16 he began to draw illustrations for the Sunday supplement of El Colombiano, Medellín’s principal newspaper. The Mexican school of mural painting, whose main exponents were Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros and José Clemente Orozco, played a major part in shaping Botero’s ideas about art at this time. His large format watercolors such as Woman Crying (1949) were particularly influenced by Orozco. From early childhood he had also been fascinated by pre-Colombian art as well as by the brightly painted altarpieces and figures of saints in the Latin American style known as “colonial Baroque.’’ It is not until 1948 that information about contemporary European art began to trickle through to Medellín; before this there was not a single modern painting to be seen in the town. During the Colombian civil war known as ’’La Violencia,’’ a brutal and bloody conflict between the liberals and the conservatives, the country’s younger generation of intellectuals discovered the work of modern writers such as Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Asturias, and above all, César Vallejo. Botero encountered the work of Picasso for the first time in a history of modern art book written by the Argentinian critic, Julio Payró. His nude drawings for El Colombiano provoked a formal rebuke from the headmaster of his school; shortly after he was expelled for publishing an article entitled “Picasso and Nonconformity in Art’’ in the same publication. Circus Family, 2008 Oil on canvas 81 ½ x 67 ½ inches

FLUFXV IDPLO\

two views

Horse, 2008 Bronze, edition of 6 36 Âź inches

two views

Man on Horse, 2010 Bronze, edition of 6 23 inches tall

1950-1952 Botero was admitted to another school, the Liceo San José, in the nearby town of Marinilla. He supported himself by making illustrations for newspapers, and completed his secondary education in 1950. After leaving school he worked for two months as a set designer with a Spanish theatre company named after the playwright, Lope de Vega. In January 1951 Botero moved to Bogotá. Here he quickly gained access to the avant-garde circle that met at the Café Automática. Its members included the writer Jorgé Zalamea, a former Ambassador to Mexico who had been a close friend of García Lorca. Botero and the other painters in the group discussed the latest developments in art, taking a particular interest in abstraction. Only five months after his arrival in Bogotá, Botero held his first solo exhibition of 25 watercolors, gouaches, drawings, and oil paintings at the Leo Matíz Gallery. Heartened by his success in selling a number of works, he spent the summer on a painting holiday in Tolú on the Caribbean coast and on the islands in the Gulf of Morrosquillo. The paintings from this period reflect the influence of Gauguin and Picasso’s Blue and Rose periods. In the Isolina restaurant in Tolú Botero paid for his meals by painting a mural that can still be seen there today. In May 1952 Botero held another exhibition at the Leo Matíz Gallery featuring pictures from the previous summer. Three months later his painting On The Coast (1952) earned him second prize in the ninth Salon of Colombian Artists held at the Biblioteca Nacional in Bogotá. The prize money enabled Botero to travel to Europe. In August 1952 Botero bought a third-class ticket to Barcelona and travelled with a group of other artists to the city where Picasso spent his youth. However, after only a few days Botero left Barcelona and moved to Madrid where he enrolled at the Academia San Fernando. In the Prado he encountered the works of the Spanish masters Velazquez and Goya. Botero supplemented his meager funds by painting copies of Old Masters for tourists. As he later recalled, “Everybody at the Academy was trying to develop his own style, but all I wanted to learn was technique.” At the end of his second term in Madrid he travelled to Paris. His former interest in modernism had by now waned, and he was disappointed by the French avant-garde art he saw in the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne. He spent nearly all his time in the Louvre studying the Old Masters. 1953-1954 At the end of the summer Botero travelled to Florence where he enrolled at the Accademia San Marco. Botero began to work in the manner of a Renaissance artist. Instead of Velázquez and Goya, he copied Giotto and Andrea del Castagno. For the next 18 months he studied the technique of

Family on a Couch, 2010 Oil on canvas 59 他 x 70 inches

fresco painting in the evenings, working in a studio in the Via Panicale that once belonged to the Macchiaoli painter Giovanni Fattori. His enthusiasm for Renaissance art was additionally fueled by the writings of Bernard Berenson and the lectures of Roberto Longhi. He travelled around northern Italy on a motorbike visiting Arezzo; Siena; Venice; Ravenna, and other historic centers of Italian art. In the spring of 1954 Botero visited an exhibition of Renaissance painting in Florence featuring works by Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno and Masaccio. In one of Botero’s characteristic paintings from this period, Departure (1953), the horses are inspired by Uccello while the atmosphere of mystery seems to be influenced by Giorgio de Chirico. 1955 In March Botero returned to Bogotá. Two months later he exhibited 20 paintings, the artistic results of his stay in Florence. The exhibition took place at the Biblioteca Nacional and was a resounding flop. Botero’s work was vehemently condemned by the critics who took their lead from the latest developments in the Paris art world. He occasionally found work producing illustrations for various magazines. In December he married Gloria Zea. 1956 At the beginning of the year the couple moved to Mexico City where his first son, Fernando, was born. While working on Still Life with Mandolin (1957), Botero developed the idea of modifying form by exaggerating its volume. In Mexico he was able to make a living by selling his pictures. 1957 In April Botero travelled to Washington D.C. for the opening of his first solo show in the U.S. organized by the Pan-American Union. During the first week of his stay he visited several museums in New York where he first encountered Abstract Expressionism. He made the acquaintance of Tania Gres who later opened a gallery in Washington and became an important source of financial and moral support. In May Botero returned to Bogotá. The following October he was awarded second prize at the tenth Colombian Salon for his painting Counterpoint. 1958 Botero’s daughter Lina was born. At age 26 Botero was appointed professor of painting at the Bogotá Academy of Art, a post he held for the next two years. His prestige slowly increased and was widely regarded as Colombia’s foremost young artist. He was asked to illustrate the short story Tuesday Siesta by Gabriel Garciá Márquez. The drawings were published in El Tiempo, the leading Colombian newspaper, and became the subject of an enthusiastic article by Jorge Zalamea in the art magazine Cromos.

For the eleventh Colombian Salon, Botero submitted his largest painting to date, a work entitled Camera degli Sposi (Homage to Mantegna), which is a loose interpretation of Mantegna’s frescoes in the Ducal Palace of Mantua. The painting was initially rejected by the jury. However, following a storm of protest in the Bogota art world and press, the jury met again and reconsidered its verdict and decided to award its first prize to Botero. In October Camera degli Sposi and the painting Sleeping Bishop went on view in Botero’s first exhibition at the Gres Gallery in Washington D.C. The exhibition was a major success with nearly all the paintings sold at the opening. In the same year Botero took part in the Guggenheim International Award Exhibition at the Guggenheim Musem in New York. 1959 At the twelfth Colombian Salon Botero exhibited The Apotheosis of Ramon Moyos, a painting of the national cycling champion. In Niño de Vallecas Botero presented a personal interpretation of Velázquez. Botero went on to complete 10 more versions of this painting utilizing an Abstract Expressionist style. 1960 From February to April Botero worked on a fresco commissioned by the Banco Central Hipotecario in Medellín. This is his only large scale work in fresco. His second son, Juan Carlos, was born in Bogotá. In October he travelled to Washington D.C. for the opening of his second exhibition at the Gres Gallery. The Niño series disconcerted many of the collectors who had bought his earlier more colorful paintings. Botero left Colombia for the third time and moved to New York’s Greenwich Village. He won the Guggenheim National Prize for Colombia. With the closure of the Gres Gallery, Botero lost a major source of support. His marriage with Gloria Zea was dissolved. 1961 In June the Galeria El Callejón in Bogotá held an exhibition of Botero’s work, comprised of paintings and 12 illustrations for Jorge Zalamea’s El Gran Burundún Burundá ha Muerto. At the instigation of Dorothy C. Miller, a curator for the Museum of Modern Art, the museum acquired the first version of Mona Lisa, Age 12, the only figurative painting bought that year by the museum. 1962 In November, The Contemporaries New York Art and Social Club presented Botero’s first New York exhibition and it was savaged by the critics.

1963 Botero moved his studio to the Lower East Side. 1964 Botero married Cecilia Zambrano. His painting Apples won first prize in the Primer Salón Intercol de Artistas Jóvenes at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá. He built a summer house on Long Island and rented a new studio on 14th Street. 1965 With The Pinzón Family painting Botero’s style reaches full maturity. The compact, often earthy tones of his early work are increasingly replaced by delicate, decorative colors applied in thin glazes. Regarding his subject matter, he explains, “Although I have painted some portraits, I don’t like working directly from models. They cramp my style and take away my liberty. I prefer to be completely free to follow my own imagination.” Botero studies the art of Rubens and makes four paintings after his portraits of Hélène Fourment. 1966 In January Botero travels to Germany for the opening of the first major European exhibition of his work held at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden. The exhibition is later shown in Munich at the Galerie Buchholz. In September the Galerie Brusberg in Hanover shows a selection of paintings. Three months later Botero has his first museum exhibition in the U.S. at the Milwaukee Art Center, and Recent Works is the subject of an enthusiastic review in Time magazine. 1967 Over the next few years Botero continually moves back and forth between Colombia, New York and Europe. He visited Italy and Germany, where he studied the art of Dürer in Munich and Nuremberg. This provided the inspiration of Dureroboteros, a series of large charcoal drawings on canvas. At the same time, Botero became interested in Manet and painted a number of pictures after the Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. He also completed several interpretations of Bonnard’s paintings of women bathing. In an interview he later explained, “After centuries of colonialism, we Latin American painters felt a particular need to find our own form of authenticity. Art had to be independent… I want my painting to have roots, because it is roots that give meaning and truth to what one does. But at the same time, I don’t just want to paint South American peasants. I want to paint everything—subjects like MarieAntoinette for example. But I always hope that everything I do will be touched by the Latin American soul.”

1969 In March Botero exhibited a selection of paintings and large format charcoal drawings at the New York Center for Inter-American Relations. His first exhibition in Paris was held at Galerie Claude Bernard in September. 1970 Botero’s third son Pedro was born in New York. The first years of the boy’s life are lovingly documented by his father in a series of pictures. Beginning in March an exhibition of 80 paintings by Botero was shown in several German museums including the Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Kunstverein, Düsseldorf; Kunstverein, Hamburg, and Bielefeld Kunsthalle. 1971 Botero rented an apartment on the Boulevard du Palais in the Ile de la Cité in Paris and continued to divide his time between Paris, Bogotá and New York, where he set up a new studio on Fifth Avenue. 1972 In February Botero held his first exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in New York. He moved his Paris studio to rue Monsieur le Prince and purchased a summer home in Cajicá, north of Bogotá. 1973 After 13 years, Botero leaves New York to settle in Paris. He makes his first sculptures. 1974 In April Botero has his first retrospective in Bogotá featuring works from 1948 to 1972. At age four, Botero’s son Pedro is killed in a car accident in Spain in which the artist himself sustains serious injuries. After Pedro’s death, Botero uses the image of the boy in many of his drawings, paintings and sculptures. 1975 Botero and Cecilia Zambrano divorce. 1976 Following a major retrospective of his work at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas, Botero is awarded the Andrés Bello medal by the President of Venezuela. The Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, mounts an exhibition of large format drawings and watercolors. Throughout this and the following year Botero devotes almost all of his energy to sculpture. He makes a total of 25 sculptures based on a wide variety of motifs. Botero marries Sofia Vari. 1977 In recognition of his contribution to Colombian art, Botero was awarded the Cross of Boyacá by the regional government of Antioquia. The Museo de Zea in Medellín opens a new room bearing the name ’’Sala Pedro Botero,’’ which contains 16 works donated by Botero in memory of his son. In October Botero’s sculptures were shown in public for the first time in an exhibition presented by Galerie Claude Bernard at the Paris Art Fair. 37

1978 Botero transfers his Paris studio to the former premises of the Académie Julian in the rue du Dragon. For the time being he abandons sculpture and returns to painting. 1979-1981 Botero’s work is shown in a travelling exhibition in Belgium, Norway, Sweden and the United States. His first American retrospective, organized by Cynthia Jaffee McCabe, is held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. in 1979. Galerie Beyeler in Basel presents an exhibition of watercolors, drawings and sculptures. Botero writes a number of short stories accompanied by illustrations which are published in El Tiempo in 1980. The following year a retrospective is shown in Tokyo and Osaka, and an exhibition of watercolors and drawings takes place at the Galleria Il Gabbiano, Rome. 1983 The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York acquired Dance in Colombia. Botero made a set of illustrations for Chronicle of a Death Foretold by García Márquez which appeared in the first issue of Vanity Fair. He established a workshop in Pietrasanta, a small town in Tuscany noted for the quality of its foundries. Botero spends a few months of each year working on his sculptures there. 1984 Botero donated a number of sculptures to the Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, and they are housed in a room specially built for the purpose. He also made a donation of 18 paintings to the National Museum in Bogotá. For the next two years he worked almost exclusively on paintings of scenes from the bullring. 1985 At the end of April the Marlborough Gallery, New York, held the first exhibition of Botero’s bullfighting paintings. Twenty-five works depicting various phases of la corrida were presented. An exhibition of his work is shown at the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. 1986 In January the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas mounted a retrospective of Botero’s drawings. Another retrospective is mounted in Munich which then travelled to Bremen, Frankfurt, and Madrid in 1987, as well as several Japanese cities. 1987 In December the exhibition La Corrida comprising 86 oils, watercolors and drawings was shown at the Castello Sforzesca, Milan.

1988 La Corrida travels to Castel dell’Ovo, Naples, and the Albergo delle Povere, Palermo. A retrospective is shown at the Casino Knokke le Zoute, Belgium. 1989 La Corrida is presented in Venezuela at the Museo de Arte de Coro and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Caracas. A selection of the artist’s sculptures is displayed at the Los Angeles Art Fair. 1990 The Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland, mounts a retrospective of Botero’s paintings, drawings and sculptures. His recent sculpture is the subject of an exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in New York. 1991-1992 Botero’s sculptures are exhibited at Forte di Belvedere in Florence (1991), the Monte Carlo Casino (1992) and along the Champs Élysées in Paris (1992). Botero is the first non-French artist to be invited to exhibit along the Champs Élysées. 1993 For the first time in New York, a major outdoor exhibition is presented along Park Avenue organized by the Public Art Fund. Botero in New York consisted of 16 monumental bronze sculptures including Maternity, Woman With Mirror, Cat, Bird, Reclining Venus, and in Central Park, Adam and Eve along with others. 1994 The sculpture exhibition Botero in Chicago is shown along Michigan Avenue during the spring and summer months. Concurrently, sculptures are exhibited in Madrid. Botero in Madrid takes place along the prominent avenue Paseo de Recoletos. This same year the artist narrowly escapes a kidnap attempt in Bogotá. 1995 In Medellín a bomb blows a hole through the huge Botero sculpture, Bird. Twenty-seven people are killed and many more injured. Botero presents the city with another sculpture of a dove to stand alongside the mutilated remains of the first. He hopes his native city will one day move away from endemic drug wars and violence and move toward “culture, hard work and peace.” 1996-1997 Botero’s monumental sculptures are exhibited in The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and in El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago. 1998 A large-scale exhibition with paintings and drawings tours Latin America including venues in Montevideo, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

1999 Botero exhibits 30 monumental sculptures in the Piazza della Signoria along with smaller sculptures and paintings at the Sala d’Arme in the Palazzo Vecchio. This is a particularly significant exhibition for Botero as he is the first to be invited to exhibit alongside Cellini, Giambologna and Michelango. 2000 Botero donates a large portion of his personal art collection to two museums in Colombia: Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, and Donacion Botero, Bogotá. The collection includes more than 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures by Botero, as well as 100 works by artists such as Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Chagall, Miró, Klimt, Dalí, Moore, Matta, Rauschenberg, Schnabel, Stella and others. The gift significantly increases both the quantity and quality of art in Colombia’s museum collections. Speaking of his gift, Botero says, “I remember when I was young in Colombia there were no original pictures by important artists. You had to look at black and white reproductions. The first time I saw a real painting was in Barcelona.” 2001 The City of Mexico organizes an exhibition covering 50 years of Botero’s work, Cincuenta Años de Vida Artistica. The Marlborough Gallery, New York, also has a big spring exhibition. In the autumn, Botero exhibits 70 of his more important paintings at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and 10 sculptures are shown along the elegant water promenade in Strandvägen. 2002 The Moderna Museet in Stockholm shows a large Botero exhibition, which travels to the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen. In France at the Palais des Arts de Dinard, Botero exhibits another large retrospective, Botero à Dinard. 2003 The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Holland, exhibits paintings, pastels, and sculptures by Fernando Botero. In Venice monumental sculptures are exhibited along the Grand Canal. The Musée Maillol in Paris presents a Botero exhibition. 2004 Botero begins a new series of works inspired by reports of mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A retrospective exhibition is shown in the Singapore Art Museum. 2005 The Palazzo Venezia in Rome shows the first works of the Abu Ghraib series.

2006 Marlborough, New York, exhibits the Abu Ghraib series. After 20 years, Kunsthalle Würth at Schwäbisch Hall organizes the first large-scale retrospective in Germany. Botero-Sculpture is exhibited at Athens Concert Hall in Greece. 2007 The travelling exhibition, The Baroque World of Fernando Botero, is organized for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and nine other American institutions between January 2007 and December 2009. On the occasion of his 75th birthday, seven galleries with close ties to Botero: Contini Art Gallery, Venice; Galeria Freites, Caracas; Gary Nader Fine Art, Miami; Galeria Fernando Pradilla, Madrid; Galeria el Museo, Bogotá; Tasende Gallery, West Hollywood and La Jolla, and Galerie Thomas, Munich, honor the artist by simultaneously opening exhibitions of his work on April 19. In July a major exhibition of Botero’s works is opened at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. 2008 Galerie Gmurzynska exhibits The Circus series, a collection of 20 watercolors and oils, in Abu Dhabi. In an interview Botero says, “After all this, I always return to the simplest things: still lifes.” 2009 The Abu Ghraib series is exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the University of California, Berkeley. Botero donates 25 paintings and 22 drawings from the Abu Ghraib series to the University of California, Berkeley. 2010 In May Botero and his wife visit the Pera Museum in Istanbul for the opening of a 65 work exhibition “that touched on different themes that are persistent in all my work in general, like everyday life in Latin America, the circus, the bullfight and still lifes.’’ Each work was carefully selected by the curator and Botero. Botero lives in Paris, New York, Monte Carlo, and Pietrasanta.

SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1951 Bogotá, Galeria Leo Matiz. Fernando Botero. 1952 Bogotá, Galeria Leo Matiz. Botero. 1953 Bogotá, Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia. Exhibition of Paintings by Fernando Botero. 1957 Mexico City, Galeria Antonio Souza. Fernando Botero. Washington, D.C., Pan American Union. Fernando Botero. 1958 Mexico City, Galeria Antonio Souza. Fernando Botero. Washington, D.C., Gres Gallery. Fernando Botero: Recent Oils, Watercolors, Drawings. 1959 Bogotá, Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia. Recent Works. 1960 Washington, D.C., Gres Gallery. Botero. 1961 Bogotá, Galería de Art El Callejón. Botero. 1962 Chicago, Gres Gallery. Botero. New York, The Contemporaries New York Art and Social Club. Botero. 1964 Bogotá, Galería Arte Moderno. Fernando Botero: Bosquejos realidades. Bogotá, Museo de Arte Moderno. Fernando Botero: Recent Works. 1965 Los Angeles, Zora Gallery. Botero: Recent Works. 1966 Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle. Fernando Botero. Exhibition traveled to Munich, Galerie Buchholz.

Hanover, Galerie Brusberg. Fernando Botero: Ölbilder und Zeichnungen. Milwaukee Art Center. Fernando Botero: Recent Works. 1968 Madrid, Galeria Juana Mordó. Botero. Munich, Galerie Buchholz. Botero. 1969 New York, Center for Inter-American Relations. Fernando Botero. Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard. Botero: Pentures, pastels, fusains. 1970 Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle. Fernando Botero: Blider 1962-1969. Traveled to Berlin, Haus am Waldsee; Dusseldorf, Stadtische Kunsthalle; Hamburg, Kunstverein, and Bielefeld, Kunsthalle. Munich, Galerie Buchholz. Botero. London, Hanover Gallery. Fernando Botero. 1972 New York, Marlborough Gallery. Fernando Botero. Munich, Galerie Buchholz. Botero: Bleistiftzeichnungen, Sepiazeichnungen, Aquarelle. Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard. Botero: Pastels, fusains, sanguines. 1973 Bogotá, Colegio San Carlos. Fernando Botero. Rome, Galleria d’Arte Marlborough. Fernando Botero. 1974 Hanover, Galerie Brusberg. Fernando Botero: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen. Medellín, Biblioteca Publica Pilota, Sala de Arate. Botero. Zurich, Galerie Marlborough. Fernando Botero: Ein Kontinent unter dem Vergrosserungsglas. 1975 Caracas, Galeria Alder Castillo. Fernando Botero. Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen. Fernando Botero. 1976 Caracas, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. Fernando Botero. Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard. Botero: Aquarelles et dessins.

Washington, D.C., Pyramid Galleries. Botero. Bogotá, Arte Independencia, Galeria de Colombia. Botero. 1977 Medellín, Museo de Arte de Medellín. La Sala Pedro Botero. 1978 Hanover, Galerie Brusberg. Fernando Botero: Das plastische Werk. Traveled to Marl, Skulpturenmuseum der Stadt Marl. 1979 Brussels, Musee d’Ixelles/Museum van Elsene. Fernando Botero. Traveled to Lund, Sweden, Lunds Konsthall; Hovikodden, Norway, Sonja Henie og Neils Onstad Stiftelser. Knokke, Belgium, Galerie Isy Brachot. Fernando Botero. Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard. Fernando Botero. Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Fernando Botero. Traveled to Corpus Christi, Art Museum of South Texas. 1980 Kruishoutem, Fondacion Veranneman. Fernando Botero. Basel, Galerie Beyeler. Botero: aquarelles, dessins, sculptures. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Fernando Botero: Recent Work. 1981 Osaka City, Municipal Museum of Fine Arts. Rome, Galleria d’Arte Il Gabbiano. Fernando Botero: Disegni e acquarelli. Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art. 1982 Bogotá, Galería Quintana. 1983 Basel, Galerie Beyeler. Botero: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors. 1984 Ithaca, New York, Cornell University. Drawings and Sculptures by Fernando Botero. Utica, New York, The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. Botero: Sculpture. Traveled to Scranton, Pennsylvania, Everhard Museum; Ithaca, New York, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Musuem, and Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University.

1985 Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte de Ponce. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Botero: La Corrida-The Bullight Paintings. 1986 Caracas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. 76 dibujos de los ultimos 4 anos, 1980-1986. Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung. Fernando Botero: Bildder, Zeichnungen, Skulpturen. Traveled to Bremen, Kunsthalle; Frankfurt am Main; Schirm Kunsthalle, and Madrid, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (1987). 1987 Bogotá, Centro Colombo Americano. Botero, dibujante. Madrid, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Pinturas, Dibujos, Esculturas. Hamburg, Galerie Levy. Fernando Botero: Oils, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculptures. Tokyo, Marlborough Fine Art. Milan, Botero: La Corrida Sal Viscontea-Castello Sforzesco 1988 Belgium, Casino Knokke. Palermo, Alberge delle Povere and Naples, Castel dell’Ovo. Botero: La Corrida 1989 Venezuela, Museo de Arte de Coro. Botero: La Corrida—Oleos, acuarelas, dibujos. Traveled to Caracas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. Mexico City, Museo Rufino Tamayo. Botero: La Corrida-Oleo, acuarelas, dibujos. 1990 Kruishoutem, Belgium, Fondation Veranneman. Fernando Botero: Peintures-Sculpture-Dessins. Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda. Botero: Recent Sculpture. 1991 Berlin, Galerie Brusberg. Botero: Der Maler-Bilder und Zeichnungen aus 30 Jahren. Florence, Forte di Belvedere. Botero: Dipitini, sculture, Disegni. Tokyo, Marlborough Fine Art. Fernando Botero: Sculpture and Drawing.

1992 Monte Carlo, Marisa del Re Gallery. Fernando Botero in Monte Carlo. Seville, Fundacion Fondo de Cultura de Sevilla, Hospital de los Venerables. Botero. Vienna, Kunst Haus Wien. Fernando Botero: Malerei, Zechnungen und Skupturen. Paris, Didier Imbert Fine Art. Botero aux Champs-Elyees: Sculptures et Oeuvres sur Papier. Avignon, Palais des Papes. Botero. (1993) New York, Center for the Arts at the City College of New York. Fernando Botero: Drawings 1964-1986. (2004) 1993 New York, The Public Art Fund, Inc. at Park Avenue. Botero in New York. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Fernando Botero: Drawings on Canvas. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Fernando Botero: Monumental Sculpture. 1994 Finland, Helsinki Art Musuem. Fernando Botero: Retrospective. Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs, Grant Park. Botero in Chicago. Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Botero en Buenos Aires. Madrid, Galeria Marlborough. Fernando Botero: Dibujos sobre Lienzo. Madrid, Paseo de Recoletos. Botero en Madrid. New York, James Goodman Gallery. Fernando Botero Drawings: 1964-1988. Fort Lauderdale, Florida, The Museum of Art. Fernando Botero: Monumental Sculptures and Drawings. 1995 Kruishoutem, Belgium, Fondation Veranneman. Fernando Botero, 25 Years at the Foundation: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors, and Sculptures. Paris, Didier Imbert Fine Art. Fernando Botero: Pastels. Beverly Hills, The Beverly Hills Fine Art Commission, Santa Monica Blvd. Botero in Beverly Hills. Japan, Takamatsu City Museum of Art. Botero in Japan. (1996) 1996 Jerusalem, The Israel Museum. Monumental Sculptures. Berlin, Galerie Brusberg. Botero at Brusbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. Santa Fe, Riva Yares Gallery. Fernando Botero: Paintings and Sculptures. Washington D.C., The Art Museum of the Americas. Botero in Washington, D.C.. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Fernando Botero: Recent Paintings. Caracas, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. Botero: Donacion del Artista. Kyongjy, Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art. Fernando Botero. 46

1997 Santiago, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Fernando Botero: Esculturas Monumentales y Dibujos. Roma, Galleria II Gabbiano. Fernando Botero: Mostra Personale. Madrid, Fundación Central Hispano. Botero—La Corrida. Lugano, Museo d’Arte Moderna. Fernando Botero. Munich, Galerie Thomas. Recent Paintings. 1998 Lisbon, Camara Municipal. Fernando Botero: Escultura Monumental. São Paolo, Museo de Arte de San Paolo Assis Chateaubriand. Fernando Botero. Toronto, Albert White Gallery. Fernando Botero: Oils and Watercolors. Rio de Janeiro, Museu de Bellas Artes de Rio de Janeiro. Fernando Botero. Montevideo, Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales de Montevideo. Botero en Montevideo. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Fernando Botero Drawings and Watercolors on Canvas 1999 Monterrey, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey. Fernando Botero. Caracas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofia Imber. Botero Dibujos. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala d’Arme. Paintings and Sculpture. Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Botero. 2000 Florence, Piazza Signoria. Botero a Piazza Signoria. Torino, Palazzo Bricherasio. Botero. Santander, Spain. Fundación Santander Central Hispano. Coleccion Fernando Botero Medellín, Museo de Antioquia. Donacion Botero. 2001 Torino, Palazzo Bricherasio. Botero. Paris, Galerie Hopkins-Thomas-Custot. Botero. Stockholm, Moderna Museet. Fernando Botero. Mexico City, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. Fernando Botero, 50 Años de Vida Artistica. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Recent Monumental Bronze Sculpture.

2002 Dinard, France, Palais des Arts de Dinard. Botero à Dinard. 2003 Venice, Palazzo Duccale. Botero a Venezia—Sculture e dipinti. Paris. Maillol. Botero: Oeuvres Récentes, Musée. Long Beach, California, Museum of Latin American Art. Fernando Botero, The Evolution of a Master. 2004 Tokyo, Ebisu Garden Place. Botero at Ebisu. Singapore, Esplanade Park, Singapore Art Museum. Botero in Singapore. Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art. Fernando Botero: Works on Paper. Paris, Galerie Hopkins Custot. Unique marble sculptures and charcoals. 2005 Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Kunsthalle Würth, Künzelsau. Fernando Botero. Rome, Palazzo Venezia. Fernando Botero—The Last 15 Years. 2006 Athens, Greece, Athens Concert Hall. Fernando Botero. New York, Marlborough Gallery. Fernando Botero: Abu Ghraib. Traveled to University of California, Berkeley, California; Katzen Center of Art, American University, Washington D.C. 2007 Milan, Palazzo Reale. Botero. Monte Carlo, Monaco, Marlborough Monte Carlo. Botero—Oeuvres récentes. Berlin, Lustgarten on the Museumsinsel. Botero in Berlin. Québec, Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec. The Baroque World of Fernando Botero. Traveled to the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas; Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

2008 Vigo, Spain, Casa das Artes de Vigo. Abu Ghraib-El Circo. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Galerie Gmurzynska. Fernando Botero, The Circus Series. Singapore. Singapore Biennale 2008 2009 Veracruz, Mexico, Pinacoteca Diego Rivera, Xalap. El Dolor de Colombia. Seoul, South Korea, National Museum of Contemporary Art. Fernando Botero. Colorado Springs, Colorado, The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. The Baroque World of Fernando Botero. Berkeley, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California. Fernando Botero: The Abu Ghraib Series. 2010 Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art. Art is Deformation. Istanbul, Pera Museum. Retrospective.

Boteroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Paris studio

Peter Selz, Berkeley, Spring 2010

THE AUTHOR PETER H. SELZ WAS BORN IN MUNICH, GERMANY in 1919 and immigrated

to the U.S. with his family at the age of 17. He attended Columbia University for the 1938-1939 academic year. Through Alfred Stieglitz, a distant relative, Selz established contact with New York and European expatriate artists. From 1941 to 1944 he served in the Office of Strategic Service in the U.S. Army and became a naturalized citizen in 1942. In 1948 he married the writer Thalia Cheronis. He attended the University of Chicago where he received a Masters of Arts in 1949 and a Fulbright Award for the University of Paris and Ă&#x2030;cole du Louvre for one year. In Paris his research focused on post-World War II French painting. Upon returning to the U.S., Selz headed the art education program and taught the History of Art at the Institute of Art (the New Bauhaus) Chicago while studying and writing his dissertation on German Expressionism at the University of Chicago. This was the first comprehensive study of the movement. In 1955 he accepted a professorship at Pomona College, Claremont, California, where he chaired the department and was director of the art gallery from 1955 to 1958. He then moved to New York to head the Department of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. He curated exhibitions such as New Images of Man (1959) and Jean Tinguelyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Homage to New York (1960). He presented the first survey show of Futurism in the U.S. as well as retrospectives of Mark Rothko, Jean Dubuffet, Emil Nolde, Auguste Rodin, Max Beckmann and Alberto Giacometti. In 1965 Selz became the founding Director of University Art Museum at Berkeley and served as director until 1973. He curated exhibitions such as Directions in Kinetic Sculpture (1966), Funk (1967), Hundertwasser (1968), Richard Lindner (1969), Ferdinand Hodler (1973) and The American Presidency 17761976. Concomitantly with directing and curating responsibilities he taught as a professor of the History of Art from 1965 to 1988. He was divorced from his first wife in 1965 and married Carole Schemmerling in 1983. Additionally, Selz taught as the Zaks Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1976, was a visiting professor at the City University of New York in 1987, and at art academies in China in 1988. Distinctions include the Fulbright Scholarship in 1949, the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany for his book on German Expressionism and exhibitions of Nolde and Beckmann. From the Rockefeller Foundation he was awarded a residency at the

Bellagio Study Center in 2007, and from the College Art Association he was presented with the Charles Rufus Morey Award for his book Art of Engagement in 1994. Selz was appointed a member of the advisory council of the Archives of American Art in 1971. From 1972 to 1973 he was a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 1993 he served on the Acquisitions Committee of the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco, and from 2001 he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Neue Galerie, New York.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Selz, Peter Howard. German Expressionist Painting. Diss. UC Berkeley, 1954. Berkeley: University of California, 1957. Print. Selz, Peter Howard. New Images of Man. New York: Museum of Modern Art, Distributed by Doubleday, 1959. Print. Selz, Peter Howard, and Mildred Constantine. Art Nouveau; Art and Design at the Turn of the Century. New York: Museum of Modern Art, Distributed by Doubleday, 1960. Print. Nolde, Emil, and Peter Selz. Emil Nolde. New York: MOMA, 1963. Print. Selz, Peter Howard. Max Beckmann. New York: Museum of Modern Art, Distributed by Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1964. Print. Giacometti, Alberto, and Peter Howard Selz. Alberto Giacometti. Garden City, N.Y.: Distributed by Doubleday, 1965. Print. Selz, Peter Howard, and George Rickey. Directions in Kinetic Sculpture. Berkeley: University Art Museum and the Committee for Arts and Lectures, 1966. Print. Chipp, Herschel Browning, Peter Howard Selz, and Joshua Charles Taylor. Theories of Modern Art; a Source Book by Artists and Critics. Berkeley: University of California, 1968. Print. Selz, Peter Howard. Ferdinand Hodler. Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1972. Print.

Selz, Peter Howard. Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History. New York: Abrams, 1981. Francis, Sam, and Peter Howard Selz. Sam Francis. New York: Abrams, 1982. Print. Selz, Peter Howard. Max Beckmann: The Self-portraits. New York: Rizzoli, 1982. Print. Selz, Peter Howard. Art in a Turbulent Era. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research, 1985. Print. Selz, Peter Howard, and Eduardo Chillida. Chillida. Basque ed. New York: Abrams, 1986. Print. Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Howard Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Writings. Berkeley: University of California, 1996. Print. Selz, Peter Howard. Beyond the Mainstream: Essays on Modern and Contemporary Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print. Selz, Peter Howard, and Anthony F. Janson. Barbara Chase-Riboud. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1999. Print. Selz, Peter Howard. Art of Engagement Visual Politics in California and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California, 2006. Print.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

D R AW I N G S

Woman on a Bed, 2006 Charcoal and pastel on paper 11 5/16 x 14 7/8 inches 29 x 38 cm Still Life with Bananas, 2006 Watercolor on paper 15 ½ x 11 ¾ inches 39 x 30 cm Musicians, 2006 Ink on paper 13 11/16 x 11 ½ inches 30 x 29 cm Woman Undressing, 2006 Watercolor on paper 15 7/16 x 11 ¾ inches 39 x 30 cm La Toilette, 2006 Charcoal and pastel on paper 14 1/16 x 10 15/16 inches 36 x 28 cm Circus Act, 2007 Watercolor and charcoal on paper 42 x 29 11/16 inches 107 x 75 cm

PAINTINGS

Oranges, 2004 Oil on canvas 15 x 20 inches 38 x 51 cm Circus Woman, 2007 Oil on canvas 46 x 32 inches 117 x 81 cm Circus Girl in Her Trailer, 2008 Oil on canvas 53 ½ x 39 ½ inches 136 x 100 cm Circus Family, 2008 Oil on canvas 81 ½ x 67 ½ inches 207 x 93 cm Harlequin with Guitar, 2008 Oil on canvas 53 x 39 ½ inches 135 x 100 cm Family on a Beach, 2009 Oil on canvas 38 1/2 x 51 ¼ inches 98 x 130 cm

Fin de Fiesta, 2009 Oil on canvas 65 ¾ x 82 inches 167 x 208 cm Country Wedding, 2009 Oil on canvas 71 ¼ x 56 inches 181 x 142 cm Family on a Couch, 2010 Oil on canvas 59 ¾ x 70 inches 152 x 178 cm

SCULPTURE

Seated Woman, 2005 Bronze, edition of 6 19 inches tall 48 cm Horse, 2008 Bronze, edition of 6 36 1/4 inches tall 92 cm Reclining Woman, 2010 Bronze, edition of 6 22 1/2 inches long 56 cm Man on Horse, 2010 Bronze, edition of 6 23 inches tall 58 cm

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Exhibition organized by J.M. Tasende Exhibition catalogue organized by Mary Beth Petersen Catalogue design Leah Roschke, Studiografik Proofreading Betina Tasende Color separation Sejersen DPS Printing Raymert Press Photography Aitor Tasende with the following exceptions Luis Fernandez: Circus Family, Family on a Couch, Fin de Fiesta, Country Wedding, Family on a Beach, Boteroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Paris Studio Stefano Sabella: Portrait of Fernando Botero Richard Nagler: Portrait of Peter Selz ÂŠ2010 Tasende Gallery. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Control Number: 2010932283 ISBN 978-0-9794823-04