Vaso

Fernando Botero was born on April 19th 1932 in Medellin, Colombia. His father (David Botero) died in 1936 of a heart attack. At the age of twelve, his uncle Joaquin sent him to a school for matadors in Medellin. In 1951 he went to Bogota "where he showed his paintings for the first time in the Leo Matiz Gallery" (Febles 145). In 1952 Botero went to Madrid to study at the Academy of San Fernando, to learn from artists such as Velazquez and Goya. In 1955 Fernando Botero returned to Bogota where he had an exhibition of his works made ​​in Italy. That same year he married Gloria Antei.

In 1956 Botero went to live in Mexico where he studied pre-Columbian art and Mexican muralists. When he returned to Bogota, Botero worked as a professor at Bogota's National University.

In 1960 Botero won the prize for Colombian artist in the Guggenheim International Award. However, at the wnd of this year Gloria and Botero separated. In 1964 he began living with Cecilia Zambrano and had a son, Peter. Throughout they years 1967-1968 Botero divided his time between Bogota, New York and Rome, where he was studying works of Dürer, Manet and Bonnard.

Botero went to Spain in 1974 with his son Peter and had an accident, Peter died at age four. After this event, Cecilia and Botero separated. In 1977 in memory of his son the Botero opened a “Pedrito room” at the Museum of Antioquia, Medellin, where 16 works were donated. Botero found love again with his current wife, the Greek artist Sophia Vari, which whom he married in 1978 and currently resides in Paris.

Botero is an artist who has never ceased to speak out against injustice and keep his art in line with the historical and social reality. In 2005, Fernando Botero made ​​a presentation around the world by providing its repertoire of works representative about the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison by U.S. soldiers during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In one of his interviews the artist expressed how his imagination...