508 - Fernando Botero (1932, Medellín, Colombia – Monaco, 2023)

Fernando Botero (1932, Medellín, Colombia – Monaco, 2023) Front: “Resurrección de la carne” – Back: reclining couple Ink in sepia over graphite on vellum. On the reverse, another sketch in ink and graphite. (19)71. Approx. 31 x 26.5 cm. Signed, dated, and titled lower right. We thank Fernando Botero Zea, the artist’s son, for his kind assistance in cataloging this work. • Fernando Botero’s profound reinterpretation of Luca Signorelli’s famous Renaissance fresco “The Damned” • In a dramatic composition of figures, the Colombian artist combines his unmistakable body forms with subtle humor. • Sheet worked on both sides, with an additional drawing of a couple on the reverse The great masters of European art history have been a lifelong source of inspiration for Fernando Botero. As early as the 1950s, the young Colombian traveled to Europe, studied the Spanish masters at the Prado in Madrid, and devoted himself intensively to Italian Renaissance painting in Florence. He was particularly fascinated by the monumental conception of the human form and the spatial presence of the figures, which would have a lasting influence on his own artistic development. This drawing from 1971 references Luca Signorelli’s famous fresco “The Damned” (1499–1505) in the Cappella di San Brizio in Orvieto Cathedral. Botero takes up the dramatically intertwined bodies, the winged demons, and the dynamic composition of the Renaissance master, yet translates them into his own unique visual language. Signorelli’s muscular, anatomically precise figures are transformed into rounded, voluminous figures whose soft physicality lends a surprisingly humorous touch to the originally menacing scene. Botero is not concerned with merely imitating an art-historical model. Rather, he appropriates its visual world and develops an independent interpretation from it, in which his admiration for the Old Masters is just as palpable as his delight in the playful alteration of proportions and forms. The drawing on the reverse side of the sheet offers a charming contrast. A couple standing close together, captured with just a few confident strokes, reveals a calmer, almost tender side of Botero. Here, too, the voluptuous body forms dominate the composition. Thus, the sheet, worked on both sides, unites two distinct visual worlds, both equally shaped by Botero’s unmistakable conception of the human figure. Provenance: Galerie Godula Buchholz, Munich; stamped on the back of the frame; Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia; Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia, passed to the current owner by inheritance. Taxation: subject to margin scheme (VAT: Margin Scheme).