{"product_id":"fernando-botero-gemalde-aquarelle-pastelle-diogenes-1983","title":"FERNANDO BOTERO, Gemälde, Aquarelle, Pastelle, Diogenes Verlag, 1983","description":"\u003cp\u003eSoftcover, 12 × 18 cm, 118 pp. Diogenes-Taschenbuch 26080, series Kunst-detebe. Edited by Jean Jouvet, with an essay by Erwin Leiser. Illustrated throughout in colour and black-and-white. German text. ISBN 3-257-26080-6.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA compact survey of Fernando Botero’s paintings, watercolours and pastels, published as part of Diogenes’s inexpensive Kunst-detebe paperback series. The modest format is an unexpectedly good vehicle for an artist whose work is so closely associated with physical expansion: bodies, furniture, costumes and gestures made dense and monumental, then reduced again here to the scale of a hand-held book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe selection complicates the familiar shorthand of the “Botero figure.” Nudes stand beside soldiers, bourgeois interiors, society portraits and deliberate encounters with European painting. Leiser’s back-cover text names the lineage directly: Velázquez and Goya, absorbed in Madrid; the Louvre’s collection, studied in Paris; Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello and Masaccio, encountered in Florence. Botero translates Rubens and Velázquez, Mantegna and Masaccio, Caravaggio and Goya into his own pictorial language — not copies of the originals, but a continuing dialogue with the old European masters conducted from within the tradition of his own continent.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe political edge is stated plainly on the object itself. Leiser describes Botero composing “official portraits” of a military junta, a presidential family, a general and a country’s First Lady. Botero is quoted on the rear cover describing these works as an expression of \u003cem\u003eintensiven Abscheus\u003c\/em\u003e — intense revulsion — toward \u003cem\u003edieser Fauna, die soviele unserer Länder regiert\u003c\/em\u003e: “this fauna that governs so many of our countries.” The exaggerated body becomes more than a stylistic signature; applied to uniforms, decorations and ceremonial portraiture, volume begins to operate as caricature.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a printed object, the book performs another transformation. Paintings built on mass and monumentality become portable reproductions, colour plates alternating with black-and-white images and isolated within generous white margins. A soldier’s inflated dress uniform occupies one spread; elsewhere a bourgeois woman holds a fur stole and small dog; Adam and Eve are translated again, this time from painting into grey reproduction. Rather than attempting to substitute for the paintings, the paperback converts them into a sequence: images circulating once again, in another form.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCondition: Good vintage condition. Moderate rubbing, handling and edge wear to wrappers, with light creasing and small marks consistent with age. Corners and extremities show wear, with cracking visible at the upper edge of the front wrapper. Interior pages clean and well preserved; reproductions remain bright and clearly printed. Rear wrapper retains the original Diogenes price code alongside the ISBN.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Diogenes Verlag","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54546395365714,"sku":"TNR-2026-0642","price":45.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/5636\/1554\/files\/Botero._Gemalde_Aquarelle_Pastelle._1983.jpg?v=1788578148","url":"https:\/\/thenewrare.com\/products\/fernando-botero-gemalde-aquarelle-pastelle-diogenes-1983","provider":"The New Rare","version":"1.0","type":"link"}