Celebrating Boterismo

Far removed from the unrest that once gripped Pablo Escobar’s city, Plaza Botero is a living, open-air museum housing the works of Colombian artist Fernando Botero, writes Rishabh Kochhar

Plaza Botero

Exploring the heart of Colombia’s Medellin, one walks into an open plaza adorned with large, rotund, and disproportionate bronze sculptures that stand proudly and bring a flicker of a smile on the viewer’s face. Far removed from the car bombings and kidnappings that once gripped Pablo Escobar’s city, Plaza Botero is a living, open-air museum housing the works of Colombian artist Fernando Botero who celebrated his 89th birthday recently.

Spread across 7,000 metres square of space, Plaza Botero houses 23 sculptures by Botero that he donated to the city of Medellin where he was born. Raised to be a bullfighter, it was a chance encounter with art that found Fernando Botero becoming one of the world’s leading artists. Indeed, very few artists can claim to have the kind of influence in the world of art that Botero enjoys — Medellin’s Plaza Botero is just one of the many examples of the unique and fascinating art form that is now known as Boterismo, which depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volumes, representing political criticism, subtle satire, or humour.

In Plaza Botero, one finds ‘Man on a Horse’, a stunning, intricately detailed sculpture of a suited man on a handsome horse, which might have something to do with the fact that Botero’s father, who died when Botero was just 4 years old, often rode on horseback as a salesman. An equally elegant sculpture, aptly titled ‘Roman Soldier’ shows a mighty Roman soldier with bulging muscles, armed and ready to fight his opponents. These sculptures shine brightly against the clear, blue sky and make for interesting props for tourists’ photographs.

Botero’s art and statues are old — the first artwork that he managed to sell goes back to 1948. But despite his age, Botero has remained active and his art has remained timeless over the last seventy years. Part of what makes his art so popular is its inherent familiarity with most of us, and the subjects’ large sizes that pique the interest of people of all ages. If Medellin is home to Botero’s sculptures, Bogota’s Museo Botero houses some of his most famous paintings that give life to elements from everyday life and objects of daily use. Never before has an orange looked so plump and tantalising, making viewers reach out to the canvas for a slice of the juicy fruit. And then there are Botero’s renditions of classic paintings such as the Mona Lisa, which in its plump form suddenly becomes so real and accessible from its usual guarded self under the veil of the Louvre. Even though “fat people” can be seen in many of Botero’s paintings and sculptures, Botero is quick to say that he paints volume, not fat women pointed out by many. Boterismo is nothing more than a testament to the Colombian way of life. A short distance from Plaza Botero is Plaza de San Antonio which houses a few more of Botero’s sculptures and was the sight of a bombing by one of Colombia’s paramilitary groups. Today, it stands as a reminder of Colombia’s constant fight against terror, which still plagues some parts of the country due to political differences.