Fernando Botero - 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Thursday, July 2, 2020 | Phillips
  • In Short

     

    “Botero the sculptor embraces the world he creates in three-dimensional form. He forms it, molds it, hugs it, and makes it a perfect universe of spherical shapes that are the faultless simulacra of his ideal of earthly perfection” – Edward Sullivan  
     

     















     
    Venus of Praxiteles with Cupid, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Photo: Daniel Lebee / Carine Deambrosis © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
    Exemplifying Fernando Botero’s trademark approach to form, Woman transmutes his career-long investigation of volume into actual three-dimensional space on a colossal scale. Drawing from myriad influences—from Ancient Greek and Renaissance sculptures to Mexican muralism—Botero developed a singular style, known as “Boterismo,” which is characterized by his treatment of large, voluptuous figures depicted in scenes of leisure. His works’ exaggerated proportions are not meant to be understood as reflections of his subject’s actual body shapes; instead, they are a means of pictorial deformation—in the same sense that Pablo Picasso deformed his figures in his Cubist pictures.

    “In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation” Fernando Botero
  • Botero's Path to Monumentality

    • Provenance

      Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles
      Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999

    • Exhibited

      Monte Carlo, Marisa del Re Gallery, Fernando Botero, March 20 – September 30, 1992 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
      Paris, Aux Champs-Elysées, Botero: Sculptures Monumentales, October 22, 1992 – January 30, 1993 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
      New York, Park Avenue Public Art Fund, Fernando Botero: Botero in New York, September 7 – November 14, 1993, no. 25 (another example exhibited and illustrated)

    • Literature

      Carol Vogel, “Inside Art”, The New York Times, July 30, 1993 (another example illustrated)

    • Artist Biography

      Fernando Botero

      Colombian • 1932

      Colombian artist Fernando Botero is known for his voluptuous and exaggerated paintings, sculptures and drawings. He studied under Roberto Longhi, a renowned authority on Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, obtaining a remarkable art historical knowledge of Western Classicism. This dialogue between an erudite education and religious art for the masses is the key in the development of his aesthetic.

      Botero was also influenced by Mexican muralism, with which he became acquainted while living in Mexico City. The monumental scale of the human forms in the murals gave rise to the voluminous figures for which he is best known. Botero's works make mordant comments on society's shortcomings; they also incorporate classical elements and are imbued with political satire and caricature.

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Property from a Private Collection, Beverly Hills

23

Woman

incised with the artist’s signature, number and foundry mark “Botero EA 2/2 FONDERIA MARIANI” on the base
bronze
118 x 48 x 48 in. (299.7 x 121.9 x 121.9 cm)
Executed in 1989, this work is artist’s proof 2 from an edition of 3 plus 2 artist’s proofs.

Other examples from the edition are housed in the permanent collections of the Antioquia Museum, Medellín; Ravinia Park, Chicago; and the Denver Performing Arts Complex.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$800,000 - 1,200,000 

Sold for $1,004,000

Contact Specialist

Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1278

20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 2 July 2020