The story of how Fernando Botero developed his iconic "Boterismo" style Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero (born 1932) is one of the best-known and most celebrated living Latin American artists. His distinctive visual style of softly rounded, inflated shapes--so idiosyncratic that it is described as "Boterismo"--is instantly recognizable all around the world. But in spite of the visual familiarity of Botero's work--or perhaps, in part, because of it--Botero is, in some ways, a largely unknown artist. How did he transition from the naturalistic illustrations of his teenage years to his mature Boterismo style? Botero: The Search for a Style tells the story of the artist's search for his own unique visual identity in the first 15 years of his career. Assimilating the influences of pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial art, the work of Diego Rivera and the Mexican muralists, and the Old Masters at the Prado Museum and the Louvre, Botero gradually developed his distinctive understanding of form and volume. Botero: The Search for a Style excavates the hidden histories within Fernando Botero's inimitable style.

The story of how Fernando Botero developed his iconic "Boterismo" style Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero (born 1932) is one of the best-known and most celebrated living Latin American artists. His distinctive visual style of softly rounded, inflated shapes--so idiosyncratic that it is described as "Boterismo"--is instantly recognizable all around the world. But in spite of the visual familiarity of Botero's work--or perhaps, in part, because of it--Botero is, in some ways, a largely unknown artist. How did he transition from the naturalistic illustrations of his teenage years to his mature Boterismo style? Botero: The Search for a Style tells the story of the artist's search for his own unique visual identity in the first 15 years of his career. Assimilating the influences of pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial art, the work of Diego Rivera and the Mexican muralists, and the Old Masters at the Prado Museum and the Louvre, Botero gradually developed his distinctive understanding of form and volume. Botero: The Search for a Style excavates the hidden histories within Fernando Botero's inimitable style.

September 14 - November 6, 1993

"I am not going turn Colombia's suffering into a business, declared Ferdinand Botero, and so he donated these powerful paintings to the National Museum of Colombia in Bogota rather than sell them. Botero created these intensely personal pieces in private over the last several years and this catalog is the first presentation of them to the art world. As an artist deeply connected to his native country, these images are quickly seen as Botero's wish for redemption from Colombia's current social crisis. Many of these images will startle the eyes that expect only Botero's joyous, voluminous portraits. The truths in these works overcome all preconceptions of his style: these are startling pictures of civil strife, as intensely realized as Goya's Disasters of War and as spontaneous and immediate as Picasso's Guernica was in 1939. "--Publisher's description.

"A comprehensive and richly illustrated survey of Venetian Renaissance architecture, sculpture, and painting created between 1400 and 1600 addressed to students, travellers, and the general public. The works of art are analysed within Venice's cultural circumstances--political, economic, intellectual, and religious--and in terms of function, style, iconography, patronage, classical sources, gender, art theories, and artist's innovations, rivalries, and social status. The text has been divided into two parts--the fifteenth century and the sixteenth century--each part preceded by an introduction that recounts the history of Venice to 1500 and to 1600 respectively, including the city's founding, ideology, territorial expansion, social classes, governmental structure, economy, and religion. The twenty-six chapters have been organized to lead readers systematically through the major artistic developments within the three principal categories of art--governmental, ecclesiastic, and domestic--and have been arranged sequentially as follows: civic architecture and urbanism, churches, church decoration (ducal tombs and altarpieces), refectories and refectory decoration (section two only), confraternities (architecture and decoration), palaces, palace decoration (devotional works, portraits, secular painting, and halls of state), villas, and villa decoration. The conclusion offers an overview of the major types of Venetian art and architectural patronage and their funding sources"--Provided by publisher.

Colombian-born Fernando Botero (b. 1932) is a painter, sculptor, and draftsman renowned for his extravagantly rounded figures combining the polish and excess of Spanish colonial baroque with the social realism of the Mexican muralists. Their humorous exaggeration belies the more serious content of Botero’s work—commentary on colonialism, political instability in Latin America, and the vernacular artistic traditions of the region, as well as European art history. Accompanying the artist’s first American retrospective in over thirty years, The Baroque World of Fernando Botero is the most extensive study of his life and work to date. Drawn exclusively from Botero’s private collection, the 100 works featured in this book, including previously unpublished paintings and drawings, represent the full scope of his oeuvre from a uniquely personal perspective. Many of these—portraits of friends and family members and remembered scenes—have remained in the artist’s possession since their creation, while others he has bought back over the years as markers of significant developments in his career. Three essays examine the artist’s creative life, from the aesthetic environment in which Botero developed his unique style to his catalyzing influence on the Colombian art world of the 1960s and 70s.

Marta Traba, one of Latin America's most controversial art critics, examines the works of over 1,000 artists from the first 80 years of the 20th century. This book is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in studying the evolution of Latin American art.