Fernando Botero
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting
We could make this publication thanks to small donations. How is 3 minutos de arte supported?
Dancing in Colombia (1980). Fernando Botero
Oil on canvas. 188 cm x 231 cm
What Botero does is Magic Realism?
What is Magic Realism? We all know it but it is hard to explain it.
Notwithstanding, the formula of the Magic Realism is very simple: there is a real scenario, with real characters, where small wonderful things take place. Those things happen as if they were details without importance, and the protagonists or the storyteller are not surprised by those things. In general, those magical events are useful to transmit moods more than to conclude a story. That is basically Magic Realism.
Botero painted scenes or portraits of characters of the everyday life during his childhood and the Colombian tradition (dances, brothels, bullfights, virgins, saints, presidents, prostitutes, nuns and soldiers). He painted his loved Colombia and its costumes. And in the middle of those situations, the protagonist figures of his canvases undergo an excessive enlargement for the reduced space of the painting where they are painted.
We find monumental volumes, arbitrary perspectives, and sometimes a ridiculous scale of figures, which varies according to their theme and compositional importance (the figures get bigger or smaller according to their emotional value.) And those unbalances and disproportions impact on the viewer generating a grotesque and humorous mood that is part of his personal style.
We can consider that it is Magic Realism, or we can discuss it. May be we relate Colombian art to Magic Realism due to the tradition of the literature of Gabriel García Márquez, for example. Or we can opt for Botero’s opinion against many experts in art: he did not consider he painted Magic Realism.
Regarding the subject, he expressed categorically: “Magic Realism, definitely not, because in my works nothing is magic. I paint about things which are unlikely but not impossible. In my pieces, nobody flies and nothing impossible happens. Art is always an exaggeration in some sense; in color, in form, even in theme, etc… but it has always been this way.”
We can think also if his art can be categorized into what is called naif art. At first sight it can seem this way. But the “innocence”, the naif quality of Botero’s work comes only from his self-taught formation —with influences from the Florentine Renaissance, Velázquez, Goya and of course, the popular Colombian painting and the Mexican muralism—. Neither his aesthetics nor his vision of the world, his message are innocent since his ironic and funny work is a social criticism.
Botero expresses the identity of the Colombian people in a deep way. Nevertheless, we may wonder why Botero is also so Latin American for Latin America and so universal for the rest of the world.
His opinion was “all art is local” and concluded: “It is not a bad thing that art is costumbrist and picturesque. Universality is attained when you focus on the local.”
Recommended links:
The Fundamental Difference Between the Absurd and the Magical Realism.
Six Paintings: Magritte and the Bowler Hat.
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Nighthawks, Edward Hopper.
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: When Will You Marry?, Paul Gauguin.
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Mont Saint-Victoire, Paul Cézanne.
You can also find more material using the search engine.
0 Comments