Fernando Botero Celebrates His 80th Birthday

On the occasion of his turning 80, Colombian painter Fernando Botero, the Museo de Antioquia, and the Medellin City Hall opened the exhibition Viacrucis: la passion de cristo on April 3^rd. The show will remain open to the public through August 8^th, 2012.

Botero, who hadn't had an individual exhibition in his native city for 12 years, returns thus to the Museo de Antioquia with his most recent production. Viacrucis —a Latin word meaning "the path of the Cross"— comprises 27 large-format oil paintings and 33 drawings. On display in this show are Botero's careful study and deep love of the Italian primitives of the first half of the Fifteenth Century and for the artists of the Renaissance. Many artists painted the passion of Christ in scenes that included medieval fortresses and hill-dotted landscapes; now Botero approaches the subject in contexts that incorporate Manhattan or small Antioquia towns.

Mexico City
Similarly, the Colombian artist is presenting a wide selection of his work at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. This show, titled: Fernando Botero: Celebración, will include 185 works created by the artist during his 65-year career. It will remain open in Mexico for three months, starting in march.

The show will include the earliest works by Botero, created in 1949, and, in the museum's Sala Nacional, a depiction of the artist's daily life in Medellin. There will also be sections devoted to religious works, in a Renaissance vein, 11 small sculptures, and 5 large-format ones in the Bellas Artes lawn.

But not only Botero's oldest works will be on view for the public, also one of his most recent creations, the Abu Ghraib series of 78 paintings depicting acts committed by US troops in that Iraqi prison.

To highlight the significance of this show, a catalog has been published reproducing all the works on display and including essays by Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Jaime Moreno Villarreal, Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, and the painter's daughter, Lina Botero, who also curated the exhibition. The catalog also includes five short stories written and illustrated by Botero —which, as he has explained, were the product of his boredom when he was bed-ridden with the flu for an entire month—, as well as a biography of the artist.

Fernando Botero: Celebración will later travel to the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, Spain, where it will remain open from October 8^th, 2012, through January 13^th, 2013.