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Lot Essay
“For my entire life, I've felt as if I had something to say in terms of sculpture. It's a very strong desire...pleasure—that of touching the new reality that you create. Certainly, in a painting you give the illusion of truth, but with sculpture, you can touch its reality... If I paint a knife in my pictures, it's imaginary, but if I sculpt it, then the sensation of having it in your hand is real— it's an object from your spirit, it's a sensual experience even in its execution. It brings a special joy to touch the material with your hands.” - Fernando Botero
Working across all media—painting, sculpture, drawings and watercolors—Fernando Botero has developed a signature style that is universally celebrated and admired. From his early paintings of the 1950s to his present day creations, Botero’s art can be characterized by an unwavering interest in volume and form. In no medium is this rendered more evident and effective than in his bronze sculptures. Unconstrained by the confines of a flat canvas, Botero is able to fully exploit those qualities inherent to bronze, most notably monumentality and mass, which are also the hallmarks of his practice.
In the present work, Botero effusively explores volume and form through the guise of one of his favorite subjects—the voluptuous female nude. Donna seduta su cubo is Botero’s modern take on that ubiquitous art historical motif of the female form. Hardly a Venus Pudica from antiquity or the Renaissance, this corpulent woman reveals, and indeed flaunts, her full figure. Sitting upright and proud with one hand behind her head, she exposes rather than covers her generous curves. With her assertive pose and confident demeanor, she in fact conjures the spirit of some of modern art’s most (in)famous femmes such as the ladies of Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon. Far from the conventional trope of woman as mere object of affection or desire, Botero’s donna declares her independence and sexuality while reveling in her amplitude.
Perhaps most notably, however, this woman exudes a sense of delight or joy that is found in the best of Botero’s works. She seems to emanate the artist’s genuine love and palpable enjoyment of creation, which Botero has expressed so candidly when describing his sculptural practice. It is perhaps this sense of pleasure made manifest, which we see here in Donna seduta su cubo, that makes Botero’s sculptures so universally appealing.
Working across all media—painting, sculpture, drawings and watercolors—Fernando Botero has developed a signature style that is universally celebrated and admired. From his early paintings of the 1950s to his present day creations, Botero’s art can be characterized by an unwavering interest in volume and form. In no medium is this rendered more evident and effective than in his bronze sculptures. Unconstrained by the confines of a flat canvas, Botero is able to fully exploit those qualities inherent to bronze, most notably monumentality and mass, which are also the hallmarks of his practice.
In the present work, Botero effusively explores volume and form through the guise of one of his favorite subjects—the voluptuous female nude. Donna seduta su cubo is Botero’s modern take on that ubiquitous art historical motif of the female form. Hardly a Venus Pudica from antiquity or the Renaissance, this corpulent woman reveals, and indeed flaunts, her full figure. Sitting upright and proud with one hand behind her head, she exposes rather than covers her generous curves. With her assertive pose and confident demeanor, she in fact conjures the spirit of some of modern art’s most (in)famous femmes such as the ladies of Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon. Far from the conventional trope of woman as mere object of affection or desire, Botero’s donna declares her independence and sexuality while reveling in her amplitude.
Perhaps most notably, however, this woman exudes a sense of delight or joy that is found in the best of Botero’s works. She seems to emanate the artist’s genuine love and palpable enjoyment of creation, which Botero has expressed so candidly when describing his sculptural practice. It is perhaps this sense of pleasure made manifest, which we see here in Donna seduta su cubo, that makes Botero’s sculptures so universally appealing.