Lina Botero: "My father compensated for the lack of money with imagination"
“Painting is an extraordinary experience. When I paint I cease to exist. I work on my feet eight hours a day and I never feel tired. It's as if I left my body and I feel ecstatic… My ambition was to be a painter and nothing more than a painter. I started painting when I was fifteen years old and I have never stopped doing it” Fernando Botero.
Fernando Botero (Medellín, 1932), is considered the living painter who has exhibited the most in important museums in the world and one of the most valued artists today. His career and his achievements are unmatched by any other living artist.
His most important exhibitions are unprecedented in the history of art. In 1992, Fernando Botero showed his monumental sculptures on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and one of them, the Male Torso, occupied the center of that famous avenue, halfway between the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe. It was the first time that the French capital exhibited the work of a living artist in its public spaces. He had already exhibited his monumental sculptures in the Forte Belvedere in Florence, and in the beautiful gardens of Monte Carlo, but after the success of the exhibition in Paris, they began a world tour of the most emblematic places of more than 25 of the most important cities. important in the world, among them on Park Avenue in New York, and on Paseo de La Castellana in Madrid. They were also exhibited in Chicago, Washington DC, Jerusalem, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile and in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, to name just a few cities where they could be seen alongside the immortal sculptures of Cellini, Giambologna and Michelangelo. Very few artists have achieved such popularity in their lifetime.
At the same time, several of the most important museums in the world have exhibited his paintings, including the Grand Palais in Paris, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Hirshhorn in Washington DC, the Tamayo in Mexico, etc…
One of his most famous paintings, Mona Lisa 12 years old, was purchased by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, another by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and another by the Vatican Museum.
His professional career includes oil paintings, sculptures, pencil drawings, charcoal, pastel, Chinese ink and sanguine that make up the magnificent works conceived by Botero over 70 years. Six of those seven decades are the ones included in the Botero sample. 60 years of painting, the largest monographic exhibition of the artist in Spain, held to date.
On September 17, 2020, the mayor of the city, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and Andrea Levy, Madrid's delegate for Culture, Tourism and Sports, inaugurated this exhibition that brings together 67 large-format works divided into seven of the most important themes that have occupied the career of this Colombian artist. The exhibition sponsored by Arthemisia, with the collaboration of the Madrid City Council, is curated by Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz and Lina Botero, the artist's daughter, and with the support of the artist himself who has collaborated with the selection of the exhibited works, most of them from European private collections. In this way, the visitor can contemplate his work through the Colombian artist's own gaze.
Among them, in addition, are the most recent works of the painter and sculptor. "Watercolor on canvas", some works on canvas and with the fresco technique that masterfully synthesize what Botero has done throughout his career.
The exhibition is divided into seven sections, corresponding to the most recurring themes in his work, which connect with his fascination and constant study of the classic themes of art history. Thus, we will undertake an artistic journey through Latin America, the central theme of his career; the Versions, which he creates based on masterpieces from the history of art; Still Life, one of his favorite pictorial genres; Religion, the Bullfight (he began drawing bullfighting scenes at the age of twelve) and the Circus, three universal themes of painting, which appealed to him fundamentally for their pictorial strength and because they offered him infinite challenges and plastic possibilities such as experimenting with technique, composition, sensuality, and fundamentally for its immense poetry and the plasticity of its shapes and colors.
According to Botero, the greatest contribution an artist can make to the world of art is their style, which is their unique and personal way of expressing themselves. In the Versions section, you can see how the maestro appropriates themes that have been recreated by others and transforms them with his own style into his own singular work of art. Such is the case of La Fornarina according to Rafael (2008), The Arnolfini according to Van Eyck (2006) and the diptych according to Piero de la Francesca (1998), all present in the exhibition.
In the room dedicated to Watercolors on canvas, which occupies the central chapel of CentroCentro, he will show his most recent unpublished work made up of a beautiful series of works that he began in September 2019 and that contain the strength of his drawings and transparency and delicacy of his watercolors. A return to his origins as a draftsman in which he experiments with watercolor, not on paper but on large-format canvas as if it were frescoes. The result reflects the artist's tireless commitment to experiment, question and reinvent his own barriers. In fact, Fernando Botero learned the technique of fresco painting during his more than two years in Italy (1953-1955), at the Academy of San Marco, Florence, directly copying frescoes by great masters such as Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello. A stage that he himself recognizes as the most important in his training as an artist.
The selection of the pieces has been made in collaboration with the Maestro so that the visitor can contemplate his work through the Colombian artist's own gaze and thus appreciate an internationally recognized style, full of volumes, shapes, colors and sensuality .
The oil painting “Bailarina en la barra”, one of Botero's most famous, is the image of the exhibition poster and the cover of his catalogue, edited by Arthemisia Books, which includes texts by Mario Vargas Llosa, Cristina Carrillo by Albornoz Fisac and Lina Botero.
Botero painted this work in his studio in Paris in the year 2000 and it was exhibited for the first time at the Maillol Museum, in a retrospective of his works. The artist himself tells Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz how this beautiful work came to be: “As is customary in my work process, it was born from a small sketch that occurred to me while I was doing another work. I transferred the basic lines of the sketch to the canvas with the brush and began to paint without knowing what color the work would have or its complete composition”, he recounts.
“I knew 20% of what the finished work would be, as it happens with all my works when I started them. In the act of painting I invented the other 80% that I did not know. For example, the ballerina's reflection in the mirror was not in the original sketch. This is how my works are born”, he says.
Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz asks him: "He returns to Madrid, an important city in his career. From his beginnings studying at the Academy of Fine Arts and his apprenticeship at the Prado, to his exhibitions such as the one at the Reina Sofía Museum in 1987 or the monumental sculptures on the Paseo de la Castellana, in the spring of 1994. What fascinates you most about Madrid?What are your fondest memories?
“The most important experience I have had in Madrid was finally seeing the originals of the masterpieces in the Prado Museum. In Colombia I had only had the opportunity to see these works in reproductions. In front of Las Meninas, in front of Goya, I felt the beauty; I didn't need any further explanations," says Botero.
What makes your art so special and where does its power lie to reach the depths of our souls? What does a 10-year-old boy from Medellín feel and impress for him to create such a revolutionary style?
An artist's style must be fully recognized even in the simplest figures. In Botero's words: “Without his own style, an artist does not exist. All good painters have managed to create their own style coherent with their ideas, immediately recognizable... Van Gogh, Botticelli, Ingres, Piero della Francesca, Vermeer, Velázquez, Giacometti or Tàpies... If I'm happy about something, it's, first, of having always lived from painting, even very poorly in my early days, in New York, when I sold drawings for 10 dollars. And, above all, to have found their own style. A vision of the world that did not exist and that is me, because I do it. Style is the creative ability to do something different, which is within one and is reflected with great emotion in the painting. An example that illustrates this is the simplest form in nature: an orange, which is however very difficult to paint. The magnificent thing is that when someone sees an orange in a painting, they automatically recognize that it is an orange by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cézanne or Botero.”
“Painting should be generous, sensual, voluptuous, and I discovered a way to express this sensuality by expanding shapes and volumes. My work is not a comment on fatness or thinness; It is the reflection of a certain way of conceiving beauty in art.”
In my opinion, Botero develops another dimension in his painting, in a sense he is self-taught, although he has references from some painters, obviously, like all artists, but he rebels against the stereotypes marked by art, it is pure imagination.
I remember that during the recording of the Comando Actualidad program on TVE about our company Massumeh Cosmetics at the Colombian Embassy in Madrid, Botero's painting According to Vigee-Lebrun(2014), filled us with light. We were excited to see it and then a great desire to take photos with that painting.
Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Lina Botero, actress, film producer, writer, television presenter, art journalist, jewelry designer, and now she dedicates herself body and soul to preserving and promoting the art and life of her father, teacher Fernando Botero.
Congratulations on this magnificent exhibition. How does it feel to be the daughter of one of the most successful and popular artists of the 20th century?
I have a deep admiration for my father as a human being and as an artist. He is a permanent example and an infinite privilege.
Spain has been an important country in your father's artistic development, right?
My father came to Spain for the first time in 1952, when he was 20 years old as a poor art student. Here he came to starve, but also here his first contact with the great universal art took place. It is also a huge source of inspiration since one of the most recurring themes in his work is that of the Bullfight and the bullfighting world.
Are you aware of the love and admiration for you around the world?
Of course, and it's a source of enormous pride for us. It is a privilege for an artist that his work enjoys such worldwide recognition. His exhibitions arouse the same enthusiasm in countries as culturally alien to ours as China, South Korea and Singapore as our Western countries.
Tell me about the work and effort involved in an exhibition of this magnitude. Have you encountered obstacles due to Covid?
We worked very hard until there were a couple of weeks left before the opening of the exhibition without knowing for sure if at the last minute the exhibition would be canceled or not, due to Covid reasons. Fortunately that was not the case. We have a wonderful team of people led by Arthemisia who remained firm in her intention to open the exhibition.
According to your father's words, "I am a painter of the old guard. I love the palette, the paint, the colors, the brushes and the smell of turpentine. I do my works with my own hands. Artists don't know today what they lose." Tell me about your childhood memories in his father's studio in East Hampton and the painting secrets he shared with you.
They are unforgettable memories. My father made up for his lack of money at the time with an abundance of imagination, and the time we shared with him was always magical. I have photographic memories of his studio in East Hampton where he had a small summer house. When he was 5 years old, he told me that he wanted to share his painting secrets with me, and I would run out to close the curtains on the large windows so that the world would not find out. His "secrets" were nothing more than the traditional formula of painting with tempera, but I felt responsible for his most precious treasure.
Your father has a really fascinating biography. It is difficult to choose where to start. It is cosmopolitan of soul and nationality. He lives between Paris and Pietrasanta, Greece and Monaco. Where do you feel most at home?
My father is happy where he can work. In each of his houses he has a studio and the first thing he does when he arrives is put down his bags and get to work so as not to interrupt his creative flow. Although he left Colombia 60 years ago, he always carries his country in his heart.
Your father has several studios. Where does he paint and where does he produce his sculptures?
Until a few years ago, my father traveled a lot, and in each place where he has a house and study, he would spend a month working. Today he spends most of his time in Monaco where he also has a wonderful studio that Prince Rainier gave him many years ago. And he also travels a lot to Greece where they have a house because his wife, Sophia Vari, is Greek. Only in Italy does sculpture work because there are the bronze foundries and the artisans who carve the marble.
“My painting reflects a world I knew during my youth. It is a kind of nostalgia and obsession, which I have made the central theme of my work. I lived fifteen years in New York and a long time in Europe, but this has not changed anything about my Latin American approach, nature and spirit. The communion with my country is total.” Facebook
Botero loves his country. He was even given the title of “the most Colombian of Colombian artists”. Colombia returns this love and as a result, the country is filled with streets and squares with his name.
Also, he is the person who has returned the most to his country. Your father is a very generous and supportive person. In 2008 he received the "Philanthropist of the Year" award for the donations he has made to the people of Colombia throughout his life.
He has donated more than 700 works of art to Colombia, Venezuela and the United States. Recently, he founded the annual "Fernando Botero" award designed to support and promote art in Colombia supported by an international jury of the highest level.
He has participated in numerous philanthropic projects, such as creating one of the largest private residences for the elderly in his country.
“In general, my painting deals with kind themes, as has been the case throughout the history of art with Titian, Botticelli, Velázquez... However, although kindness and beauty prevail, my works do not always They show an optimistic aspect of life. I have made a very extensive series inspired by the violence in Colombia, my country, and another showing the torture in the Abu Ghraib prison at the time of the war in Iraq”, your father tells Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz.
“Art does not have the power to produce social or political changes, but it does have the power to perpetuate the memory of an episode over time. The world remembers the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war because Picasso painted it. The same thing happened with Goya and the executions of May 2. Art serves as a testimony that endures over time and in the collective memory.”
Although your father has stated that “art should be an oasis, a place of refuge from the harshness of life”, his work is sometimes very politically compromised. His works have had a global social impact and are capable of moving millions of people. He has never put any of the paintings in these series up for sale, because according to the teacher, "One cannot make a business based on pain."
Your father is a very supportive man. How has your father influenced your life and what values has he instilled in you?
My father has had the ability to make radical decisions in his life, without hesitating, without measuring the consequences on a personal level, with great integrity, always with a clear direction, always in a consistent manner. He is dedicated and committed at all levels. Your immense generosity is a reflection of that commitment. His example is a permanent life lesson.
In 1995 there was an attack in the Plaza de San Antonio in Medellín, in which a bomb was placed at the foot of his bronze sculpture entitled Pájaro. It was a Sunday and the square was full of families. Twenty-six young people died in that attack. As a tribute to the victims, your father donated the sculpture La Paloma de la Paz and today both sculptures lie next to each other, as a permanent reminder of the tragic and violent moments that the country experienced. October 24 of this year 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the creation of the United Nations Organization, and last September 21 was the International Day of Peace.,. In this framework of celebration, what would your messages be for these important dates? Peace is essential for the progress and development of a country. Colombia has suffered greatly as a result of this civil war and now deserves peace. We must forgive, and move on. It is the future that our children deserve.
In 2015, 150 of your father's works were exhibited at the National Museum of China in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and the China Art Museum in Shanghai. With this, Botero became the first living artist to exhibit at the National Museum of China, the second most visited museum in the world after the Louvre in Paris. You were executive producer of the documentary Botero, directed by Don Millar. How was the experience?
In 2015, after the exhibition in China, our friend and Canadian film director Don Millar came to Mexico to propose that we make a documentary about my father. It was an extraordinary opportunity because for many years we had precisely this concern. We worked together for two and a half years and filmed in 10 cities around the world. Today the documentary has been screened in more than 30 international festivals in China and has been shown so far nationally in theaters in Colombia, Mexico, the US, Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. . It is currently presented on Spanish Television.
In November 2017, a major exhibition entitled Botero dialogue with Picasso, created by Cecilia Braschi, was inaugurated at the Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence, in which parallels are established between the works of these two great masters who coincided in several of the themes that occupied his work, including bullfights, the circus, still life, the nude and violence.
What impressed you the most about this exhibition?
What impressed me the most about that exhibition was precisely seeing my father's work together with that of that great master of all time that is Picasso. He is considered the absolute genius of the 20th century, and to see how a parallel is established between the two artists is extraordinary. It is a privilege that should be deserved, and my father's artistic career has allowed it. He always greatly admired Picasso, but his work was not influenced by him. It's fascinating how both artists share passions and interests that they approach differently.
I'd like to mention an unprecedented act of generosity on your father's part. I'm talking about Botero's famous art donations to his country
Between 1990 and 2000, your father donated more than 300 works, both his own and from the private collection he gathered throughout his life of European masters of the 19th and 20th centuries, to the Museo de Antioquia in Medellín, as well as to the Banco de la República and the Botero Museum in Bogotá, and 23 monumental bronzes to adorn the Plaza Botero in Medellín.
Thanks to him, for the first time in the history of Colombia, the Colombian people have free access to original paintings, sculptures and drawings by artists such as Corot, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Degas, Braque, Bonnard, Miró, Matisse, Bacon, Giacometti and Chagall among many others.
What did that gift he gave to Colombia mean to your father?
The huge donation that my father made in the year 2000 to two museums in Colombia, in which he gave away his entire international art collection which included impressionist works including Corot, Monet and other artists such as Picasso, Bacon, Beckman, Miro, Dalí, to name just a few, along with more than 200 works of his own authorship and 23 monumental sculptures, occurred precisely at one of the worst moments in the recent history of our country when we were going through the war against the drug trafficking The country was submerged in a kind of dead end tunnel, and the daily news included massacres, murders, bombs and kidnappings. My father's donation translated into a gesture of confidence in the country and in the future, and it contributed enormously to uplift the spirit of all Colombians. Today both the Botero Museum in Bogotá and the Antioquia Museum in Medellín have become two of the most visited places in the country. And I often hear my dad say that this was the best decision he has ever made in his life.
According to your brother, Juan Carlos Botero, in his book “The Art of Fernando Botero,” Botero is one of the most disciplined people you will ever meet. He works every day of every year. For him, there are no days off, no holidays or weekends. He paints at Christmas, on his birthday and on New Years. He gets up early every morning and goes to his studio, working non-stop until 8 every night. He has no assistants, not even a secretary or manager. Everything this master signs is in his own hand."
“I continue to work with the same enthusiasm, energy and ability as when I was thirty. The phrase: "One begins to know how to paint at eighty" has been attributed to Titian. I was reading an article in a scientific magazine about the longevity of artists. He said that the desire to paint and create is what keeps you alive. And so I feel it, like an incombustible passion. I'm looking forward to dawn quickly to paint again. I paint seven days a week wherever I am. The energy comes to me when I am painting. Each painting is an explosion of energy and enthusiasm. Every morning I look forward to getting to my studio; I'm like a monk in retreat, I arrive in the morning and lock myself in to work all day. It is a small ecstasy in which the hours pass without my noticing.” Botero tells Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz.
Your father is one of the world's most beloved living artists. Here you have a small sample of the admiration they have for him.
His Excellency Don Franciasco de Borbon y Escasany, the Duke of Seville, Grandee of Spain, recalls: “I met Botero, briefly, in Miami where, as president of Miami National Bank, I sponsored, in 1981, the first Exhibition of Latin American painting that was celebrated in the USA. I have to say that I was impressed by his work. As an anecdote, I will say almost two decades later, traveling extensively in Africa, it was rare not to find copies of Botero's paintings, in almost all the local markets, in all the countries that he had to visit for work.”
The Hon. Mr. Yuri Korchagin, the Russian ambassador and his wife Natalia, both great admirers of your father, dedicate these words to him: “As for the great painter Fernando Botero, I can tell you that, from our mission in Colombia, Botero is our artist! favorite!! His painting is extraordinary, unique, with a lot of his own style, with a lot of humor and love for people. !!I love it!! In Russia, Botero is very popular. The Russian people admire and adore him. He is a very authentic painter and presents very well the character of the country, traditions and personality”
According to our mutual friends The Hon. Mr. Alberto Furmanski and his wife Aida, former Colombian ambassadors in Spain: "Botero is the best Ambassador Colombia has ever had."
For José Luis Martínez-Almeida, mayor of Madrid, "It is an honor that Madrid has been the city chosen by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero to present his great anthological exhibition, Botero: 60 years of painting, a unique opportunity to discover the trajectory of a 20th century classic, seen by himself, from the perspective of maturity.”
What are your next projects?
The current exhibition will be in Madrid until February 2021, and a few months later a major exhibition will take place in Mons, Belgium. In 2022, a traveling exhibition is organized that will travel to three great museums in Japan in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
Thank you so much, Lina. I have loved interviewing you. May your well-deserved success continue.
The exhibition will open its doors every day, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., until February 7, 2021, at CentroCentro.
Nasrin Zhiyan is co-founder of Massumeh
