Happy Birthday Fernando Botero

Congratulations to Fernando Botero, who turns 89 today. We fondly remember all the exciting projects we have done together in the past 20 years. On the occasion of his 75th birthday, Galerie Thomas, together with six other galleries worldwide, opened the exhibition 'Botero Global' on April 19, 2007.

In the same year, Galerie Thomas, in collaboration with the Columbian Embassy, publicly staged Botero’s monumental sculptures in Berlin's Lustgarten and his large ‘Horse’ in front of the Brandenburger Tor.

Fernando Botero’s sculptural style, like that of his painting, is as distinctive as it is unique. The grotesquely exaggerated curves of his figures make his sculptures appear monumental, an impression which is further enhanced by the hieratic posture of the figures and the smooth, unwrinkled and shiny surfaces.

These representations are by no means meant to be caricatures but are rather an exaggeration, which, for Botero, leads to the core of the pictorial problem, both in sculpture and in painting.