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Lot Essay
An avid student of the history of art, the prodigious painter Fernando Botero is known for citings of iconic old master and modern masterpieces that he ably transforms with his characteristic sense of voluptuousness and disproportion. Botero's fascination and reverence for the history of art and images may be linked to his early encounters with Baroque painting and sculpture in his native Colombia and his eventual travels as a young artist to Madrid, Florence, Rome, and other key European cities in which he spent long hours studying and copying the works that as a boy in Medellín he had only observed as reproductions in art books and magazines.
But far from simply transcribing these art historical sources, Botero's approach to these antecedents is grounded in a sincere desire to converse with them while simultaneously making them his own and thus inserting himself within an historical continuum. As the artist well states, "If I paint a painting that has the same subject as a famous painter has used, I am part of the same tradition."[1]
Indeed for Botero these images become something akin to a visual archive from which he draws inspiration and borrows freely through direct citations and multiple composites. In Adam and Eve, Botero takes on a familiar biblical subject explored by countless Renaissance and Baroque masters--from Giotto, Michelangelo and Raphael to Dürer, Titan, and Tintoretto. And while for his predecessors this subject matter was intrinsically bound to its biblical and religious sources for Botero, who approaches it from the vantage point of the history of art and image making, the subject's sacred content is all but neutralized. The latter enables the artist to liberally transform its traditional representational codes injecting his unique style and wit. Here the mythical "first couple" is depicted amid luscious greenery while Adam sits atop a satiny red bed (perhaps another sign of the couple's transgressions). Eve looks on as she nonchalantly enjoys a bite of the proverbial forbidden fruit while a serpent hovers above. The castigating hand of the Maker appears from the upper left corner while the pair remains seemingly oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Indeed here as elsewhere Botero imbues his characters with a sense of confidence and abandon that embraces life's choices rather than accepting social or moral conventions.
1) As quoted in Edward Sullivan, Fernando Botero: Drawings and Watercolors. (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), xxiii.
But far from simply transcribing these art historical sources, Botero's approach to these antecedents is grounded in a sincere desire to converse with them while simultaneously making them his own and thus inserting himself within an historical continuum. As the artist well states, "If I paint a painting that has the same subject as a famous painter has used, I am part of the same tradition."[1]
Indeed for Botero these images become something akin to a visual archive from which he draws inspiration and borrows freely through direct citations and multiple composites. In Adam and Eve, Botero takes on a familiar biblical subject explored by countless Renaissance and Baroque masters--from Giotto, Michelangelo and Raphael to Dürer, Titan, and Tintoretto. And while for his predecessors this subject matter was intrinsically bound to its biblical and religious sources for Botero, who approaches it from the vantage point of the history of art and image making, the subject's sacred content is all but neutralized. The latter enables the artist to liberally transform its traditional representational codes injecting his unique style and wit. Here the mythical "first couple" is depicted amid luscious greenery while Adam sits atop a satiny red bed (perhaps another sign of the couple's transgressions). Eve looks on as she nonchalantly enjoys a bite of the proverbial forbidden fruit while a serpent hovers above. The castigating hand of the Maker appears from the upper left corner while the pair remains seemingly oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Indeed here as elsewhere Botero imbues his characters with a sense of confidence and abandon that embraces life's choices rather than accepting social or moral conventions.
1) As quoted in Edward Sullivan, Fernando Botero: Drawings and Watercolors. (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), xxiii.