Fernando Botero: Prism of My Convictions

There's nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it's a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.
-Fernando Botero

I'm the most Colombian of the Colombians, even though I've lived 47 years outside of Colombia. I've lived 13 years in New York, and I never did a painting about New York. I've lived in France more than 30 years, and I've never painted Paris.
-Fernando Botero

I had wanted to be a sculptor throughout life, but to do so, I had to stop painting.
-Fernando Botero

I often think about death, and it saddens me to leave this world and not be able to paint more. I love it so much.
-Fernando Botero

You paint what you know best; what you went through as a teenager and child. My world is the one I got to know in Medellin; I never paint anything else other than that.
-Fernando Botero

Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.
-Fernando Botero

The circus allows one to be logical and unreal at the same time. In the circus, all is possible: there can be a man with two heads or a character with a green face.
-Fernando Botero

My work is a self-portrait of my mind, a prism of my convictions.
-Fernando Botero

An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it.
-Fernando Botero

I have seen Colonial churches since I was very small, Colonial painting and polychrome sculpture. And that was all I saw. There was not a single modern painting in any museum, not a Picasso, not a Braque, not a Chagall. The museums had Colombian painters from the eighteenth century and, of course, I saw Pre-Columbian art. That was my exposure.
-Fernando Botero

I follow politics very closely. I read several newspapers every day.
-Fernando Botero

In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.
-Fernando Botero

Art is important because when people start to forget, art reminds them what happened. Like 'Guernica.' People would not remember the tragedy of Guernica today if it were not for that painting.
-Fernando Botero

In the '60s, I did many satirical portraits of dictators.
-Fernando Botero

The only duty an artist has is in the quality of the art. There is no moral obligation to denounce. An artist confronted with a tremendous injustice sometimes feels inclined to say something. Denouncing the situation is the artist's choice.
-Fernando Botero

An artist is born like a priest is born. If they are born an artist, I would tell them art is not a game: it is something very serious which completely requires everything you have to give.
-Fernando Botero

Art is always an exaggeration in some sense; in color, in form, even in theme, etc... but it has always been this way. It is the same with the nature of some works by Giotto or Massacio, or the color of life as expressed by Van Gogh.
-Fernando Botero

My popularity has to do with the divorce between modern art, where everything is obscure, and the viewer who often feels he needs a professor to tell them whether it's good or not. I believe a painting has to talk directly to the viewer, with composition, color and design, without a professor to explain it.
Fernando Botero

People say, 'What a discipline, painting so much.' I say, 'No, I love it.' Nothing amuses me as much as my work. To have discipline would be not to paint.
-Fernando Botero

I love my country, and it hurts not to be able to see my country, as I did for so many years. I hope that I will one day be able to live in a peaceful Colombia.
-Fernando Botero

I had an uncle who took me to the ring in Medellin when I was 15 years old. In school, we had someone who taught us how to bullfight.
-Fernando Botero

Before anything else, I started painting bulls and matadors. That was my initiation to paint.
-Fernando Botero

Bullfights have so much color. Not just the matador but also the bull, the arena, and the public. It's all very festive.
-Fernando Botero

Bullfights are a very cultural thing. I know many people think it's cruel, but so many things are cruel. Hunting, the electric chair, wars. These are all cruel things as well.
-Fernando Botero

Nobody ever told me, 'Art is this.' This was good luck in a way because I would have had to spend half of my life forgetting everything that I had been told, which is what happens with most students in schools of fine arts.
-Fernando Botero

I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.
-Fernando Botero