Fundación Ibercaja presented this morning the exhibition “Fernando Botero. Sensuality and Melancholy” that can be visited at the Goya Museum until February 12, 2023. Curated by Marisa Oropesa, it brings together a total of 40 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and watercolors signed by the Colombian artist, internationally considered one of the major references in the history of art in recent decades.
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The presentation of the exhibition was attended by José Luis Rodrigo, general director of Fundación Ibercaja; Charo Añaños, director of the Goya Museum, and Marisa Oropesa, curator of the exhibition.
“Fernando Botero. Sensuality and melancholy” invites to a journey through the artist’s career, from his first paintings in the 60s, made during his time in New York, to pieces made in this very year 2022.
The volume of forms as the protagonist
The volume of forms is the central element in all his work, which has accompanied him throughout his artistic career. Fernando Botero has been able to cement his own personality with an internationally distinguished work by creating a new body prototype, far from any ideal of beauty.
He is an artist who has marked an era and a style with which he has exhibited in some of the most emblematic places in the world such as Park Avenue in New York, Beijing, Berlin, Florence or the Champs Elysees in Paris. Nowadays, consecrated as an icon of the 20th century, his works are exhibited in the most important museums of the world and in the main capitals of the planet. He has become one of the most admired painters by the public and one of the few living artists who are known and recognized worldwide.
Francisco de Goya, his great reference
The rooms of the Goya Museum gather an exhibition that perfectly reflects Botero’s unmistakable style, which has acquired a name of its own known as “boterismo” (Boteroism). A style that also has as great referents Francisco de Goya, the master he has most admired, or the geniuses of the Quatrocentto, to which are added the influence of Rivera and Picasso in his work.
This style, characterized by the unparalleled use of volume in the forms, the precision and definition of the contours and the explosion of colors, can be seen in each of the pieces that complete the exhibition.
All these elements are what make up the language within the work of Fernando Botero, which are joined to the different themes reflected in the pieces of the exhibition. Among them are nudes as can be seen in Protestant Family or The Letter; iconic paintings such as Santa Rosalia; still lifes such as Still Life with Mirror or plein air paintings such as Courbet in the Countryside.
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Botero’s work for all ages
On the occasion of the exhibition, Fundación Ibercaja has published a careful book-catalog that documents the 40 works in the exhibition, and has detailed articles written by Marisa Oropesa, curator of the exhibition, and Begoña Torres, director of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid.
In parallel, a program of guided tours has been organized to bring Botero’s world closer to all ages, which will take place from Tuesdays to Saturdays at 10 am and 5 pm and Sundays at 5 pm. The exhibition can also be enjoyed with the family with the workshop “Journey to the world of Botero: color, light and volume” where different games are proposed to deepen the knowledge of his works and an activity to recreate one of his sculptures. The proposal, on Saturdays and the last Sunday of the month at 12 noon, is aimed at groups of adults with children from 5 to 12 years old.
“Botero’s Universe” will also reach primary and secondary schoolchildren with this educational program (Thursdays and Fridays at 10 a.m.) that includes a guided tour and an artistic workshop to create a drawing with volume that versions one of the Colombian artist’s best-known works. Schools and high schools can also sign up for the “Images and self-image” program, whose objective is to work with children and teenagers in a fun way on the importance of self-image acceptance and to see how the representation of the human body has changed throughout the history of art.
Fundación Ibercaja remains faithful to its commitment to bring art and culture to all Zaragozans and visitors to the Goya Museum. With “Fernando Botero. Sensuality and melancholy” comes for the first time to Aragon the work of one of the great masters of art today, who has shaped his own personality with an internationally recognized work that uses the forms, the explosion of color and its roots as its main language.
