(born in Medellin, Colombia, in 1932; lives and works in Paris and New York)
Couple under the umbrella, 2004, signed and dated, oil on canvas, 50 x 38 cm, framed

This work is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity signed by the artist with the stamp of Galleria Tega, Milan.

Provenance:
Galleria Tega, Milan (stamp on the reverse)
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Milan, Galleria Tega, Fernando Botero, 21 April – 18 July 2015, exh. cat.
p. 54 with ill.

‘Working in his studios around the world, Fernando Botero […] paints with the expertise of a master craftsman
of the past, with the curiosity of a man completely immersed in his time, full of interest and a sense of the new.’
(L. Beatrice, L’opera mondo di Fernando Botero, in Fernando Botero, edited by Galleria Tega, Skira 2015, p. 41)
Botero’s painting is original and does not fit any particular trend – ‘we can speak of Botero as a literary artist, though not a narrative artist in the narrow sense of the term: his painting addresses the public, captures the gaze, wagers on familiarity between painter and observer. It never shoves you against the ropes, it is never traumatic; it accompanies you, like the pages of a long novel, of a work-world, engaging, enveloping, full of surprises.’ (p. 35)

Different influences are mixed into the works of the Venezuelan artist: the classicism of Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello and Raffaello, which Botero considered as providing the theoretical basis of painting and which he was able to observe and study during his stay in Italy; the Picassian examples, still widespread in Paris in the 1950s; and finally the ancestral, indissoluble bond with his native Colombia, ever present in his work, filtered through a long stay in Mexico spent searching for inspiration from popular mural art. His work revolves around the memory of his childhood, presented in an intense tragicomic manner and through a marked propensity for storytelling.

His figurative representations sit outside any particular framework, and matured through his studies in Spain, France and Italy (in Tuscany in particular, Botero established his own studio to complement his work as a painter with sculpture). He initially struggled to establish himself, especially in America which at the time revolved around New York, and was dominated by Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. In 1961, however, the purchase of one of his works by MoMA opened up new career horizons for Botero.

In the past decade the South American artist’s style has been distinguished by a scratching and corrosive irony and by the soft sensuality of his palette. There is no doubt about Botero’s ability to change the fortunes of a work through a painted body, a force that breaks into a still space and definitively changes its fate: ‘I paint volumes. When I paint a still life I always paint volumes, if I paint an animal I paint it volumetrically, and the same goes for a landscape. I’m interested in volume, in the sensuality of form. If I paint a woman, a man, a dog or a horse, I always have this idea of volume [...].’  Botero doesn’t use models, he invents the scene from scratch, enchanting us through the concept of art he defines as inexhaustible, ‘an endless process, in which one never stops learning.’