Bouncing Bodies. Fernando Botero's fulsome and frolicking forms

Fernando Botero is an artist with his own style. For more than six decades, the Colombian's "Boterismo" technique has captured collectors, institutions, and public spaces worldwide with a unique, fleshy, overblown approach to the human body. Through these corpulent creations, Botero has become one of the most recognized artists from Latin America, his artworks displayed in prominent places around the globe, including Park Avenue in New York City and the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Botero has gained international fame, capturing the whimsy of life by painting corpulent and sometimes comical figures. The dilation of his subjects gives the figures an abstract, unreal, and even grotesque dimension. Studies in beauty and terror, Botero’s monumental figures can be sensual, and many are filled with pain and sorrow.

This monograph presents the paintings realized in the last thirty years and created using his own unique language, which is a distinguishing feature of his work and an extraordinary blend of Latin American tradition and European painting.

Pleasantly plump

With whimsical irony and a style reminiscent of the old masters, Fernando Botero (b.1932) began painting caricatured animals and corpulent bodies with disproportionate heads at a time when his contemporaries were fervently rejecting figurative work in favor of abstraction. More recently he has expanded into sculpture, creating delightful large-scale bronze works portraying the same sorts of voluminous figures he so loved to paint. Like the writings of Gabriel García Márquez or the music of Astor Piazzola, Botero’s work has come to represent modern Latin American culture.

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art Series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Mariana Hanstein, a native of Chile, studied art history in Munich, Bonn. and Venice. She is an art historian who has published works about Peter Paul Rubens and 18th-century Venetian painting and was an art critic and editor of the art market section of the German newspaper Die Welt for almost ten years. Hanstein lives and works in Cologne.

Pleasantly plump

With whimsical irony and a style reminiscent of the old masters, Fernando Botero (b.1932) began painting caricatured animals and corpulent bodies with disproportionate heads at a time when his contemporaries were fervently rejecting figurative work in favor of abstraction. More recently he has expanded into sculpture, creating delightful large-scale bronze works portraying the same sorts of voluminous figures he so loved to paint. Like the writings of Gabriel García Márquez or the music of Astor Piazzola, Botero’s work has come to represent modern Latin American culture.

About the Series:
TASCHEN portfolios feature high quality prints that beg to be framed. Tucked in each portfolio are 14 large-format reproductions, each with a brief description. Guaranteed to brighten any day, they also make great gifts for art lovers!

В июне 1951 года предприимчивый фотограф выставил в своей мастерской в Боготе акварели, рисунки и живопись молодого неизвестного художника, недавно прибывшего в столицу из провинции. Успех был скромен, однако художника заметили. Год спустя Лео Матис – так звали фотографа – организовал другую выставку, теперь уже, безусловно, успешную, поскольку все выставленные произведения были раскуплены. Никто в то время – ни любители, ни сам художник, ни покупатели – не мог себе представить, что когда-нибудь девятнадцатилетний Фернандо Ботеро из Медельина станет самым известным художником Латинской Америки. Впрочем, тогда ничто не предвещало такого хода событий. Его картины были настолько разнородны, что посетители поначалу сочли, что это выставка нескольких художников. За последние десятилетия ни один художник не имел столь широкого признания. Дело не в экзотическом сюжете, его популярность – скорее следствие совершенного художественного мастерства. Уже сейчас творческое наследие Ботеро огромно – это почти 3 тысячи живописных полотен и более 200 скульптурных произведений, а также бесчисленное количество рисунков и акварелей.