From September 17, 2024, to January 19, 2025, Arthemisia and Palazzo Bonaparte honour Fernando Botero with Italy’s first exhibition of his work. We met with the artist’s daughter Lina Botero, co-curator of the experience, to learn more about the great Colombian painter.

Botero exhibition with Hotel de Russie

Botero’s work is recognised - and loved - for its audacious proportions. His figures have been described as being ‘hungry for space’. How does Botero use volume as an expression of sensuality?

"For Fernando Botero, beauty and sensuality in art reside in the exaltation of volume. From his early encounter with Italian art from the Quattrocento, he understood the importance of volume and came to rationalise his almost innate fascination with generous and abundant proportions. Botero remained faithful to this principle. His work is rooted in elevating volume, creating a universe of volume where every figure, animal, plant, landscape, and fruit is painted with the same intention and with the same gesture."

"Homenaje A Mantegna" exclusive paint of Botero

What are some of the most significant works on display in this exhibition, and what motifs or messages are conveyed in them?

"We have managed to secure a loan from a very important art collection in the US of a painting that remained out of public view for more than forty years. With Homenaje a Mantegna, Botero won first prize at the XI Salón Nacional de Artistas Colombianos in 1958, and it was recognised as an extraordinary and controversial work of art. It is a version of one of the frescoes that adorn the Camera degli Sposi at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, created by the great Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506). This painting is a moving declaration by Botero to this great artist, and by extension, to the Italian Renaissance. He takes this majestic scene and transforms it into his own work, emphasising its monumentality and exceptional use of colour, treating it with new conventions. He synthesises the most relevant plastic values of Mantegna for him and reduces the composition to strictly familial characters"

Botero with Hotel de Russie and de la Ville

Botero lived through tumultuous years in his native Colombia, and themes of conflict are evident in his work. Yet he believed ‘art should be an oasis: a place of refuge from the hardness of life’. How does humour come into play in his art as a means of exploring the human condition?

"Throughout history, the purpose of art has been exactly that: to offer an oasis and a refuge from the harshness of life. Nowadays, this is often considered almost superficial, but beauty in art is precisely what makes the viewer experience the same emotions and sensations every time they stand before a great work of art. However, as you say, there were moments in which the events of the time, both in Colombia and in the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, forced him to create a parenthesis in his work to depict the horrors that were taking place. Botero defended the stance that art should speak directly to the viewer without the need for an intermediary or explanations. For him, humour was a way to make the viewer’s access to the artwork easier. It was a small doorway that allowed entry into his universe."

Lina Botero,
“For Botero, humour was a way to make the viewer’s access to the artwork easier. It was a small doorway that allowed entry into his universe.”
Fernando Botero Bailarina en la barra

Botero was a devoted patriot and referred to himself as ‘the most Colombian of Colombian artists’. How did his European travels and his studies of the Renaissance masters influence his work?

"Botero’s second home, without a doubt, was Italy, where he felt a strong connection. He maintained a home and a studio where he worked on sculpture for the last 40 years of his life in his beloved Pietrasanta. The major influence in his work stems from the art of the Quattrocento, the Renaissance period in Italy. His unique and original style combined the language and technique of Renaissance art with the idiosyncrasies of Latin America. He understood from a very early age that ‘the more local art is, the more universal it becomes’. Despite living for more than 70 years outside of Colombia, the central theme of his work was always his memories of his childhood and adolescence, growing up in the provincial world of Medellín, Colombia, in the 1930s and 1940s. That universal thread in his work has historically sparked the same enthusiasm and interest in countries and cultures very different from his own."

Botero exhibition with Hotel de Russie and de la Ville

Do any paintings particularly stand out from your childhood, and do you have a different favourite today?

"This particular version of La Menina after Velasquez is an especially beautiful work of art. It is the first time it has been exhibited publicly, as it hung for years in my father’s studio in Paris. The theme and brushwork emulate that of Velasquez, another great master whom he greatly admired, yet this work is very much Botero. He often appropriated themes made famous by other artists and transformed them with his style into something unique and entirely different. It is no longer a Velasquez, but a Botero. It reminds me of his studio and the countless hours we spent together there."

Botero, The Bath

This exhibition marks one year since your father’s death. How do you hope people feel when they view this extraordinary collection of Botero’s work?

"I hope the viewer will be left with an understanding of the importance and magnitude of Botero’s work and his contribution to art history. His loyalty to his artistic convictions led him down a solitary path in the art world, often swimming against the dominant artistic trends of the time. However, this is precisely what places his work in a unique category today, universally recognisable. This exhibition, together with the monumental sculpture show that we opened on July 10th in some of the most iconic locations in the city’s historic centre, a truly unprecedented event in the Italian capital, constitutes a great “Botero in Rome” event with which we commemorate the first anniversary of my father’s death."

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