Fernando Botero

Fernando Botero, a Colombian figurative painter and sculptor, was born in Medellín and is one of the most celebrated contemporary Latin American artists.  In an age that idolizes slenderness, Botero has made an art of corpulence. Strongly influenced by the colorful folk art of his homeland, he attempts to "create sensuousness through form" in his canvases of rounded, massively rotund figures painted in bright decorative hues and in his notably monumental bronze sculptures of similarly voluminous people and animals. Often cheerfully whimsical and sometimes satirical in approach, his work typically includes individual and family portraits, nudes, equestrian figures, bullfighting scenes, and still lifes.