Self-taught, he was for a short time at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid and later at the San Marcos Academy in Florence. He received classes on the art of the Italian Quattrocento with Roberto Longhi.

Botero stated in 1967: "I am a protest against modern painting and, nevertheless, I use what is hidden behind its back: the ironic game with everything that is absolutely known to all. I paint figurative and realistic, but not in the sense of flat of fidelity to nature. I never give a brushstroke that does not describe something real: a mouth, a hill, a pitcher, a tree. But the one I describe is a reality found by me. It could be formulated this way: I describe in a realistic form an unrealistic reality. " Tracy Atkinson, one of several foreign critics who has referred to his work, has written: "" Botero's world is people in a wide repertoire that is generally absurd and a bit pathetic. But the warmth and sympathy of his treatment saves her from her ugliness and makes her instantly unforgettable. The artist's attitude is so intense and consistent that he reaches into all things.

That is why a watermelon in a Botero painting has the same personality as a fat lady at a picnic in the mountains. It is a world that suffers from gigantism, but full of innocence and the best will. Behind him is the quality of the painting, which is exceptional from the point of view of the trade "". Botero's paintings are, above all, paintings of great beauty. The artist has chosen a traditional way of painting, but this is so transformed by his personal vision that it is unique and very original. The first known works of Botero are drawings: the illustrations for the literary supplement of the newspaper El Colombiano de Medellín. In 1951, moved to Bogotá, he exhibited for the first time individually at the Leo Matiz gallery, and presented watercolors, gouaches, inks and oils. Subsequently, in the innumerable individual exhibitions of him, Botero has made several exclusively of drawings, in different media, often combining oil paintings with drawings

Paintings in which the figures appear bound by the lines and in which, even in the expressionist phase, vehement lines are perceived that define the representation. Large format drawings, many made on canvas. Botero undoubtedly gives special importance to drawing. With the sale of some of his works exhibited in Bogotá in 1951, he settled in Tolú. On his return to the capital he exhibited again, now with more success. At the IX National Salon, held in 1952, Botero won the second prize in Painting with the oil in Front of the Sea. He is, then, 20 years old and decides to travel to Europe (Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Florence). There he remained until 1955. From these years in the Old Continent, Botero has commented: "" In reality I consider myself self-taught. I worked for three years in fine arts schools, but practically never had a teacher. I did my learning by reading, looking at museums and, above all, painting "".

In 1956 he traveled to Mexico, then went to Washington and New York. Upon his return in 1957, he shared with Alejandro Obregón and Jorge Elías Triana, the second prize in Painting at the x Salón de Artistas Colombianos, with the oil painting Contrapunto. In 1958 he won the first prize at the XI National Salon, with the oil painting La camera degli sposi (Homage to Mantegna). Since then, Botero's dealings with the great masters of the past and with a few modern ones has been constant. Botero insisted, and succeeded, in painting and drawing like the best, and for this he not only visited museums and methodically studied techniques and procedures, but also worked long hours. That familiarity and admiration for art since the Renaissance well explain the charcoal Food with Ingres and Piero de la Francesca (1972), in which Botero appears sharing a table with the French neoclassical and the great Italian painter of the Quattrocento.

But if he has been able to sit at the table of classics for talent, commitment and work, Botero has not stopped being an artist from Latin America, Colombia and even Medellín: "" Many artists believe that art becomes universal when copying universally. I do not think so. I think you have to be honest with yourself, and by being honest you can reach people from all over the world [...] I am the most Colombian of Colombian artists, even though I have lived outside of Colombia for so long, since 1960 [...] In a way, I paint Colombia the way I want it to be, but it's not like that. It is an imaginary Colombia that is and, at the same time, is not the same as the real Colombia "". In 1961 he settled in New York, where he worked for twelve years; later he settled in Paris. However, Botero is an authentic representative of Latin American art not only for his themes of nuns, prelates, military, brothels, villages with simple houses and still lifes with tropical fruits, but for his magical realism.

He works from a world known and remembered, but in it many wonderful things appear and happen: the composition on a wine-colored background of eight prelates piled up one on top of the other as if they were the fruits of a still life, from the oil painting Bishops Dead (1965) ; the disproportionate disproportion between the tiny first lady and the military giant, with a tiny cup, from the oil painting Dictator drinking chocolate (1969); the presence of a stifle and a snake on the living room floor, from the charcoal Family with Colombian animals (1970). The catalog of Botero's exhibition, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington in 1979, divided his works into six categories: 1) Religion: Madonnas, saints, devils, cardinals, bishops, nuncios, mothers superiors, nuns; 2) Great masters: various interpretations of works by Jan van Eyck, Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Andrea Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Caravaggio, El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Georges de la Tour, etc .; 3) Still and living natures: animals, especially in the sculptures of recent years; 4) Nudity and sexual customs: particularly brothel scenes; 5) Politicians-presidents, first ladies, military; and 6) Real and imaginary people: the cyclist Ramón Hoyos, art sellers, members of his family, numerous self-portraits, and many anonymous characters who pose, eat, dance or ride horses.

Among the imaginary people we must mention the bullfighters and the many characters, including those of the flamenco tablaos, related to the world of bullfighting, a recurring theme in Botero's work since the early eighties. According to Simón Alberto Consalvi: Botero's bullfighting is a confession: an exercise in nostalgia and, finally, a feast of great bulls, thrown matadors, Bourbon picadors, suicide horses and celebratory pestles. But the brave party cannot be understood without the presence of death, and Botero knows it well; He has painted paintings such as Toro dying (oil, 1985) and Death of Ramón Torres (oil, 1986), in which the winner is a skeleton brandishing a sword, straddling the animal's rump. Since 1976 Botero has combined his work as a painter and draftsman with that of a sculptor.

Fernando Botero. Photo: Hernán Díaz

In 1977 he exhibited his sculptures for the first time at the Grand Palais in Paris. Counting on some previous works made in acrylic paste, dating back to the early sixties, Botero today has an abundant production in three dimensions, especially bronzes and marbles. When reading the artist's own texts commenting on his sculptures, it is easy to understand the "" archaic "" character that all his three-dimensional works have. Botero speaks, for example, of going back to face the problem within traditional materials such as bronze or marble, of seeking the spirit of colonial sculpture, having roots in pre-Columbian art, having some inspiration in pieces of Mexican popular art.

With these inclinations, it cannot be denied that Botero has managed to carry out, in the best workshops of Pietrasanta (Tuscany, Italy), some very good quality sculptures, especially when he magnifies a fragment of the human body or leads to the absurdity of the contrast between two figures or parts of a body. Not in vain has Botero received awards such as the exhibition of his sculptures on the Champs Elysees in Paris (1992) and on Fifth Avenue in New York (1993), as well as the exhibition La corrida, at the Luis Ángel Arango Library in Bogotá (1993). Today, Botero still seems inexhaustible. Creator of an unmistakable "" race "", owner of an unlimited imagination, taster of the best classical painters, connoisseur of all the traditional trades in painting, drawing and sculpture, legitimate son of Colombia and Latin America, the Antioqueno imaginer assures that the problem It is not changing but deepening [See volume 6, Art, pp. 127 and 128].