BY JOSE LUIS ORTIZ FLORES
Botero (1932-2023), considered by some critics the most successful Latin-American visual artist during the late 20th century, defined a style: “boterismo”. He liked to think it was like an accident; of course, it was the result of many years of exploring and hard work, from mandolins to “chubbies”.
Christian Padilla, historian and art curator, describes this process in his book “Fernando Botero. La búsqueda del estilo”. There was a young 16 years old Botero in his hometown Medellin, without museums, but where muralists as Pedro Nel Gómez and Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo influenced him through the city walls, artists influenced by Mexican muralists during the 1940´s.
Botero learned from great Italian “Quatrocento” masters, Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca, what may be called “the sensuality of the forms”, during the time he lived in Florence. After that, in 1956 he arrived in Mexico, where he discovered how Mexican muralists had modified the perspective of the human body. Mexican muralists turned human bodies gigantic, with volume and round, inspiring many artists of this period.
During this time in Mexico, Botero was painting a series of mandolins, and instead of painting the central part of the instruments with the regular proportions, he painted a small point in them, realizing that those internal dimensions, being smaller, turned the whole body larger, the mandolins grew. After this exercise, he played with fruits, jars, tables, and other objects.
And once the world of objects was dominated by Botero with these new dimensions, he applied it to human bodies. And then, he combined both, human anatomy, and objects in a way where a “human species” would fit with those objects. Botero said he never painted “chubbies”, they were a new kind of humans in this Botero world.
Artists may spend a lifetime searching for a style of their own, a personal language, so anyone would recognize their art pieces, very few get it. Botero got it during his early 30´s. But his “discovery” would not prevail without hard work.
Some say that art is only that which reflects spiritual principles or values such as beauty, creativity, honesty, generosity, discernment, patience, and perseverance, and “boterismo” has all of these characteristics.