Reflecting on Colombia’s most famous artist, Fernando Botero
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. This is lesson number 621, so you can find the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/621.
On today’s story: Fernando Botero was Colombia’s most famous artist. His paintings and sculptures featured over-sized characters. He died last month, so today we’ll take a look at his life and work. In the second half of today’s lesson, I’ll show you how to use the English expression “call attention to.” And we have a song of the week. Let’s get going.
Fernando Botero, Colombia’s artist of over-sized subjects
Fernando Botero’s work—his paintings and sculptures—are instantly recognizable. They portray people high and low through an enlarged prism. His subjects were kings, generals, popes, and ambassadors; but also housewives, guitar players, married couples, children and office workers.
His subjects were plump, voluptuous, rotund, portly—I’ll just say the simple word for it. They were fat.
But they were not undignified. He didn’t paint generals, archbishops—even once Pablo Escobar—he didn’t exaggerate their proportions to parody them or to make them seem unserious. Instead, the artist said he was celebrating volume, something that has a long history in Italian and Greek art. He once famously said, “I don’t paint fat” people; instead, he said, “What I paint is volume.”
By giving everyone large dimensions, he could call attention to specific features, even facial expressions. In one painting called “Card Players,” a man at a card table looks with astonishment and bewilderment at one of the other players at the table. His eyes tell a story that wouldn’t be possible on a normal-sized face.
“The Street” from 1979 shows a man stretching the fabric of his brown suit—but he has a comically skinny tie and a pencil-thin moustache. “Dancers at the Bar” from 2001 shows a ballet dancer with enormous thighs and small, round kneecaps, almost buried in flesh.
“Man on Horseback,” a sculpture, and a painting by a similar name, show a rotund man sitting on top of a horse—but the man is almost as big as the horse.
People are Botero’s most famous subjects, but even inanimate objects didn’t escape the Botero treatment: he painted guitars, cocktail glasses, cars, houses, and tables. Living things, like animals also feature in his paintings. Watermelons, birds, even trees are all depicted in his famous rotund style.
Botero himself , ironically, was slender. In his later years, he had a serious look, with gray hair and a gray goatee. He is Colombia’s most famous artist, but he spent most of his time in Europe. He died in Monaco in late September at age 91. He had been working right up until the end; his artistic career spanned more than 50 years.
Botero was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1932. As a young man, he studied to be a matador—a bullfighter whose job is to kill the bull. And bullfighting is one of the subjects that he regularly depicted in his paintings.
Botero’s big break came in 1961, when the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, bought a painting called “Mona Lisa, Age Twelve.” The painting depicted the Mona Lisa in his signature, plump style. Her eyes, looking to her left, are extra-large.
That sale raised his profile and his popularity—though not in the art community. The most critically acclaimed style in the 1960s in New York and Europe was “abstract expressionism.” That style depicts movement and energy, but in a way that’s abstract—it’s not recognizable as anything real.
Botero’s figures were considered out of the art mainstream. His work was considered less prestigious than that of the abstract expressionists of the time. And many artists are expected to evolve, to change their styles over the years.
Botero never did —and that’s another way he didn’t fit in with the art establishment. He knew he wasn’t popular with art critics. But people loved him, and they never got tired of his figures. His paintings and sculptures sold very well, making Botero a wealthy man during his lifetime.
His sculptures have been displayed around the world. One stands in the lobby of the Time Warner Center, a popular mall, office, and condo building in New York City: that was the first Botero sculpture I had ever seen. You can also see his sculptures on the streets of Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Jerusalem, and smaller cities around the world.
But the best place to see Botero’s art is in Colombia itself. Although the artist only spent about a month a year in his home country, he donated his own work and pieces from his private collection to the Museo de Antioquia in Medellín and to the Museo Botero in Bogotá.
I have been to both of those museums. They are both excellent. There are many great things to do and see in Colombia, but these two museums alone are worth a trip. The Botero Museum in Bogotá was, I think, my favorite thing in the country. You just never get tired of looking at the figures, enjoying their expressions, imagining their lives.
Every character is plump—fat. And so in that sense everyone is equal. So you quickly move on from looking at the voluptuousness—since everyone’s like that—and instead you look at everything else. Facial expressions, positioning in the room, clothes, posture, relationships.
I really like these—so we’re going to take a look at them on one of our upcoming conversation calls. We do those on Zoom with Plus+ members. We’ll put several of them up on the screen and talk about them. We did that with Edward Hopper paintings a while back, and that was fun.
So if you’re not yet a Plus+ member and you want to join the Botero call, you still have time—just go to PlainEnglish.com/Plus, sign up, and literally one minute later, you’ll see the schedule and the Zoom links to join the calls. PlainEnglish.com/Plus.
JR’s song of the week
It’s Thursday, so JR has a song of the week us. It’s called “Guilty” by Lady Wray. This is what you would call a classic soul sound. Here are some of the lyrics: “I don’t [want to] sleep in my bed; I don’t [want to] feel free to roam; I won’t be comfortable; because I know that you’re gone.”
So “Guilty” by Lady Wray is the song of the week, thank you JR.
Great stories make learning English fun
