Plump figures in bright colors, humorous yet subtly satirical scenes — these are what come to mind when thinking of Colombian artist Fernando Botero. His signature style, known as “Boterismo,” is defined by exaggerated, voluminous and inflated proportions.
“Fernando Botero: The Triumph of Form” at Seoul Arts Center in Seoul presents 112 of the artist’s oil paintings, drawings and sculptures, focusing on his practice from the 1970s through to his later years. The artist died in 2023 at the age of 91.
“Volume has to do with a certain concept of sensuality in art. I am convinced that painting should be generous, sensual and voluptuous,” the artist once said.
Co-curated by Lina Botero, the artist’s daughter and director of the Fernando Botero Foundation, the touring exhibition arrives in Korea following stops in European cities.
“Korea was a very close to my father’s heart because of an incredible reception that his work has always had and to the record-breaking assistance that his exhibitions have enjoyed. This is the third time we come to Korea to exhibit his work,” Lina Botero said in Seoul on Thursday.
The exhibition, running from Friday to Aug. 30, consists of six sections, offering a comprehensive view of the artist’s decades of artistic practice.
The director said her father had maintained that the purpose of art was to create “pleasure” — a belief that shaped the majority of his work.
Botero once turned to darker subject matter, including violence in Colombia and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These works, which his daughter referred to as “two parentheses in his artistic creation,” were not included in the exhibition in Seoul.
“Those subject matters touched him so deeply that he felt he could not remain indifferent,” she said. “But he always returned to what he believed was the purpose of art: to create pleasure.”
The director emphasized that her father rejected common interpretations of his work as a depiction of “fat figures.” His works were never meant as a commentary on the human body but rather a broader exploration of form.
“He always said, ‘I have never painted a fat figure in my life,’” she said. “What he created was a universal sense of volume, where every human figure, animal, landscape and object was treated in the same way — with the intention of giving generosity and sensuality to form.”
Lina Botero also highlighted a pastel portrait of her younger brother, Pedrito, as one of the most memorable works in the exhibition.
The piece, painted after the child’s death at the age of four in a car accident, was discovered decades later in a storage space in New York, where it had remained unseen for more than 40 years.
“It's such a beautiful painting. It's done with incredible mastery of the technique the subtlety of the pallets of the colors that he chose,” the daughter said.
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