Accurate misrepresentations: The artwork of Fernando Botero

With Jim and Marilyn here we were excited to share a few of our favorite places we have discovered. On Tuesday we set out to explore our favorite place in town, La Plaza de Botero. The plaza is in the heart of down town with a large grassy area with more than a dozen large, gordo, Botero statues. Fernando Botero, Medéllin born Colombian painter, has a unique style of using large, chubby, or gordo, features throughout his paintings whether they are of flowers, fruit or people. On one side of the plaza is a large checkered, brick, cathedral style building where the cultural museum is located. On the other end of the plaza is our sacred place in town where we keep returning to on a regular basis: the Museo de Antioquia (Museum of Antioquia). The museum, home to hundreds of South American art treasures and the Juan Valdez Coffee shop, has everything you could ask for in a leisurely afternoon.

We entered the museum and quickly took the elevator to thte thrid and top floor. We started viewing artwork from Botero’s personal collection that he donated to the museum in the early-nineties, while Colombia was actively trying to self-destruct through guerilla warfare and drug cartels controlling the country. Botero, still living today in Europe, believed that during this time more than any other the country needed to have a sense of pride and beauty in themselves so he donated over one hundred pieces of artwork, more than 60 of these were his own showing the beauty of daily life in Colombia.

Botero’s paintings tower over your head with vibrant colors and larger than life representations of families, Colombian streets, nuns, priests, other religious figures, and bull fighters. (Botero himself was a struggling bull fighter and his paintings show his sensitivity to both the bull and the matador.) One of his favorite motifs in sculpture and in paint is Adam and Eve, usually with Adam going for the apple. (Guys have always been trying to blame their mistakes on women, even from the beginning.)

Other floors of the museum are packed full with South American artwork from Spanish colonization up to modern work. The one period that seems to be missing is pre-Columbian artwork. However, we have been told most the remaining indigenous artwork is stored in the national museum in Bogotá. One of my favorite pieces of artwork in the museum is a towering Diego Rivera almost cartoon like painting of a mountain farmer.

After introducing mom and dad to Botero we took them to the gift shop where they loaded up on Botero calendars to take home. Then we sat casually on the patio in front of the museum with cups of Juan Valdez coffee watching statues and the people until the afternoon rains encouraged us to head home.