Fernando Botero arrived in New York in 1960, a Latin American painter who refused to give up the figure in a city in thrall to abstraction — the New York of de Kooning and the New York School. He didn't fold in. He took what he wanted from it and painted bigger.
Botero in New York, presented with The Botero Foundation, looks at the years from 1960 to 1973, when Botero worked in deliberate contrast to everything around him and arrived at the language the world now recognizes on sight: volume as a way of seeing. The exhibition gathers some forty works — the Mona Lisa reimagined, still lifes sharpened by Pop, cardinals and society portraits swelled into something at once familiar and strange — with important works on loan from The Botero Foundation alongside a selection for sale.
The first exhibition devoted to a single artist at the landmark Breuer building, Botero in New York is on view from 22 July to 7 September, free and open to the public.
