Botero: Beauty in the Round

In Search of a Distinct Style

Botero didn't start big (in style or public praise). In the beginning, he struggled to exhibit his work. The artist only began to gain recognition in the late 1950s, with museums and local newspapers catching wind of his unique aesthetic.

At the end of his university career in 1952, Botero travelled to Europe to study the techniques of the greats like Velázquez and Goya. He spent much of his time in Italy, nurturing a deep fascination for the Renaissance, fresco art, and painters such as Uccello and Piero della Francesca.

He later returned to Central America and settled in Mexico. Here, in 1957, he painted the prestigious Still Life with Mandolin – the first of his canvases inspired by Pre-Colombian and Folk Art – and learnt how to distort and dilate his shapes for dramatic visual effect.

Voluptuousness and Grandiosity

“I had always tried to render monumental shapes in my work. One day, after a lot of work, I took a pencil at random and drew a mandolin with a very large shape, just as I would always do. But when it came time to draw the hole in the middle of the instrument, I decided to make it much smaller and suddenly the mandolin grew in size and took on extraordinary proportions."  –Fernando Botero

In 1958, he won the First Prize at the Colombian National Salon of Artists, setting his artistic career in motion. The artist had a penchant for voluminous characters and a somewhat flammable colour palette, traits which evolved to produce increasingly striking and, at times, humorous effects. His round and voluptuous subjects, starting with thin lines and building up to top-heavy, satirical faces, can be said to resemble mandolins. 

While the subject matter of his paintings varies drastically, from prostitution to bullfighting to religious scenes, his works nevertheless present distinctive, immovable traits. Essential to the Boterismo style, for example, are the stoic facial expressions in his portraits – emotionless characters with unfazed faces – and their plump and podgy physicalities.

The artist also made a name for himself recreating famous artworks in his signature style. By imposing his famed facial expressions and plump personas onto classics, like the Mona Lisa, Botero challenged the artistic canon and paved the way for future parodical art. 

His adaptation of the Mona Lisa gave him recognition in the United States when it was bought by New York’s MoMA in 1961 and subsequently featured in an edition of the New York Times, further propelling him along an enviable and abundant career.