Medellín’s most famous native son and artist

Fernando Botero a famous figurative artist known for obesely bloated and oversized depictions of people and animals. His signature style is known as “Boterismo”. Botero’s works can be found in more than 50 exhibits in major cities worldwide including New York and Paris. He has been bestowed with accolades including the First Prize in Painting at the prestigious Salón Nacional de Artistas in 1958, at the age of just 24. He was also given the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture award by the International Sculpture Center in the USA, which recognizes his significant contributions to the medium. Some of his work command selling prices in the millions of dollars like his bronze sculpture, Dancers that fetched more than $1.7 million US dollars at a Christie’s auction.

Botero was born in Medellín on April 19, 1932. His paintings were first exhibited in 1948 when he was 16 years old. He held his first one-man show two years later in Bogotá. He lived in New York in the 1960’s and then relocated to Paris in the 1970’s. In recent decades, Don Fernando has lived most of the time in the latter but spends one month a year in his native city of Medellín.

In 2004, Botero turned to the overtly political, exhibiting a series of drawings and paintings focusing on the violence in Colombia stemming from drug cartel activities including the famous “Death of Pablo Escobar” pictured here.

The same year he donated 23 bronze sculptures to an outdoor park in front of Museo de Antioquia that became known as Botero Plaza. More of his sculptures can be found in Medellín’s Berrio Park and San Antonio Plaza nearby.

All of the Sculptures at Botero Plaza may be seen at this excellent site: https://medellinguru.com/plaza-botero/

As part of Live in Colombia’s Medellín Exploratory Tours, our guests will visit Botero Plaza as well as other famous landmarks around the city while they gather a plethora of information about living here.