Collection: Fernando Botero

Fernando Botero (1932–2023) was a Colombian painter and sculptor whose distinctive pictorial language — known as Boterismo — is characterised by the systematic inflation of volumes: figures, animals, objects and interiors rendered with an exaggerated corpulence that operates simultaneously as formal signature, cultural commentary and satirical instrument. Born in Medellín, Botero studied in Bogotá before spending formative periods in Madrid, Paris and Florence, where sustained engagement with Velázquez, Goya, Rubens, Piero della Francesca and Masaccio shaped a practice that translated European Old Master painting into a Latin American idiom. His subjects ranged from bourgeois domestic interiors and nude figures to official portraiture of military juntas and presidential families, in which exaggerated volume functions as caricature and political critique. Major survey exhibitions were held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., and the Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá.