Born in Medellin, Colombia in 1932, Fernando Botero moved in 1951
to Bogota, where he had his first individual exhibition at the Leo Matiz
Gallery.
He studied in Madrid at the San Fernando Academy and in Florence,
where he learned the fresco techniques of the Italian masters. In 1956 he
taught at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Bogota and traveled
to Mexico City to study the work of Rivera and Orozco. In 1957 he exhibited
at the Pan American Union inWashington.
During the sixties in New York Botero developed a form of figurative
painting integrating Renaissance and Baroque painting with the colonial
tradition of Latin America.
In 1969 the Inflated Images exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York established him as a major painter.
Since 1972 he has had individual exhibitions at the Marlborough Gallery
in New York, Buchholz Gallery in Munich, and Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris.
In 1993 Fernando Botero was honored with an exhibition of his sculpture
along the Champs Elysees, the first non-French artist to exhibit at this
venue. Botero has also been honored with an individual exhibition at the
Grand Palais in Paris.
(Source: ArtScene)