Lot Essay
Created in 2015, Fernando Botero’s Drinking People features a group of four gathered around the dining table in a warmly lit domestic space. The two men in suits, one drinking like a fish and the other tuning a guitar—are both raising their arms as if presaging an eventful moment to unfold. The two voluptuous ladies, dressed in emerald and cobalt blue, are at once the participants and spectators of the ordinary scene. Botero’s arrangement of colours between characters, objects, and backgrounds in Drinking People is intriguingly remarkable as it creates punctuation in diagonals, leading one’s eyes to travel across the canvas surface back and forth while conjuring a harmony between chaos and balanced. As David Ebony once spoke about Botero, ‘... Many of his works are inspired by the day-to-day activities of the townsfolk in the small Colombian villages where he was raised. In Botero's vision, ordinary men and women are transformed into heroic protagonists. Even in the midst of mundane chores, they maintain a posture of solemn dignity’ (D. Ebony (ed), Botero Abu Ghraib, New York, 2006, p.10).
Botero, with his witty, whimsical, and incisive focus on his own idiosyncratic artistic principles for nearly seven decades, created an immediately recognisable body of work that has made him an almost universal icon. Renowned globally for his formidable figures that flaunt their sensuous contours, Botero was an avid observer of the human spirit and a devoted learner of art history. He drew a great deal of inspiration from the European canon of art history, from Jan Van Eyck and Velázquez to Ingres and Manet. In the 1950s, as a young, ambitious artist, the artist journeyed to Europe, where he studied the frescoes of Italy's Renaissance, the masters of Spain's Golden Age, and the turn-of-the-century School of Paris in France with ardour. Botero's lifelong interest in critically revisiting famous paintings by renowned Western artists was sparked by this early schooling. According to the artist, interacting with these powerful creative precursors opened the door to genuine creativity.
The composition of the present work calls to mind 17th century Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Steen’s works, which depict everyday gathering scenes from families to friends with a flair for humour. Botero’s Drinking People is reminiscent of the theatricality and sympathetic treatment of the quotidian vices of average people often found in the Dutch master’s pictorial world. Botero frequently mentioned Medellín's lasting impact on his art—his characters are not individuals but instead kinds that embody the unique characteristics of the native Medellín, Colombia. Despite the artist having moved away from his hometown for over half a century, his paintings still populate with Medellín's population, bordellos, cobblestone alleys, colonial buildings, and mountainous scenery. Here in Drinking People, as one of Botero's typical seminal works, there are twofold dynamics: an honest, entertained depiction of everyday life on the verge of civilised society in local Colombia and a keen homage to the Western canon of art history. Exemplifying Botero’s ability to combine high art and popular culture in a way that is at once evocative and unfolds, in the artist’s words—'real originality’, the present work is a synthesis of lived, personal experience originated in the uniqueness of a place and a storied lineage of art historical precedents.
Botero, with his witty, whimsical, and incisive focus on his own idiosyncratic artistic principles for nearly seven decades, created an immediately recognisable body of work that has made him an almost universal icon. Renowned globally for his formidable figures that flaunt their sensuous contours, Botero was an avid observer of the human spirit and a devoted learner of art history. He drew a great deal of inspiration from the European canon of art history, from Jan Van Eyck and Velázquez to Ingres and Manet. In the 1950s, as a young, ambitious artist, the artist journeyed to Europe, where he studied the frescoes of Italy's Renaissance, the masters of Spain's Golden Age, and the turn-of-the-century School of Paris in France with ardour. Botero's lifelong interest in critically revisiting famous paintings by renowned Western artists was sparked by this early schooling. According to the artist, interacting with these powerful creative precursors opened the door to genuine creativity.
The composition of the present work calls to mind 17th century Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Steen’s works, which depict everyday gathering scenes from families to friends with a flair for humour. Botero’s Drinking People is reminiscent of the theatricality and sympathetic treatment of the quotidian vices of average people often found in the Dutch master’s pictorial world. Botero frequently mentioned Medellín's lasting impact on his art—his characters are not individuals but instead kinds that embody the unique characteristics of the native Medellín, Colombia. Despite the artist having moved away from his hometown for over half a century, his paintings still populate with Medellín's population, bordellos, cobblestone alleys, colonial buildings, and mountainous scenery. Here in Drinking People, as one of Botero's typical seminal works, there are twofold dynamics: an honest, entertained depiction of everyday life on the verge of civilised society in local Colombia and a keen homage to the Western canon of art history. Exemplifying Botero’s ability to combine high art and popular culture in a way that is at once evocative and unfolds, in the artist’s words—'real originality’, the present work is a synthesis of lived, personal experience originated in the uniqueness of a place and a storied lineage of art historical precedents.