Fernando Botero

Botero is one of the most popular artists alive today and is exhibited in countless institutions throughout the world. He gained international fame painting corpulent and comical figures who embody the sometimes whimsical tragedy of life. The dilation of his subjects gives them abstract, unreal, and grotesque dimensions that are studies in beauty and terror. Botero imbues his monumental figures with an overabundant sensuality that reveals a gluttony of human truth-from torture to greed, pleasure to despair, absurdity, impassivity, and more. Botero had his first solo exhibit at the age of early and nineteen, by twenty, had been awarded second prize at the National Salon in Bogota. He time spent traveling to study the work of the old masters-eventually reinterpreting classic paintings in his gargantuan style.