Fernando Botero is a Colombian artist best known for his paintings and sculptures of exaggerated human and animal forms. He was born in Medelln, Colombia, on April 19, 1932, and died in Monaco on September 15, 2023.
Despite spending a significant amount of his adolescence attending a matadors’ school, Botero’s primary passion was for the arts. In his early years of painting, he was influenced by the pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial art that was all around him, as well as by the political murals of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.
In 1948, he had his first showing of his own paintings, and two years later, in Bogota, he held his first solo exhibition. He made a fortune by copying paintings from the Prado Museum, especially those by the artists who were his heroes at the time, and selling them to visitors while he was studying painting in Madrid in the early 1950s.
Cecilia Zambrano: Who Was Fernando Botero’s Second Wife?
Later, after relocating to Paris, Fernando met Cecilia Zambrano. In 1964, he remained with her, and the two of them conceived a son. Botero was hurt in the collision that tragically claimed the life of his son.
Fernando and Cecilia Zambrano split up in 1975.