Fernando Botero

He is renowned for his figures with round and voluptuous shapes inspired by pre-Columbian art. Having dubbed himself ironically "the most Colombian of Colombian artists"

Fernando Botero painter and sculptor was born in 1932 in Medellin, Colombia. After the death of his father, who died prematurely, Fernando Botero was raised by his uncle who forced him to become a bullfighter. Enrolled in a bullfighting school, the young boy cannot overcome his fear of the animal and decides to stop his training. He draws and admires French painters like Toulouse-Lautrec. At the age of nineteen, he exhibited his paintings for the first time in Bogotá, where he settled in 1951. After having participated in several other exhibitions, he received a prize at the Salon of Colombian artists, rewarding his talent. He then obtains money, which allows him to undertake a journey through Europe. He travels to Spain where he falls in love with the Prado Museum, to France where he caricatures Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa', and to Italy where he is hypnotized by the painter Piero della Francesca. A man of all cultures, he moved to New York in 1960 where he met the curator of the Museum of Modern Art a year later. She offers him to exhibit his 'Mona Lisa', which gives him a certain recognition of the artistic world. His paintings, marked by round and sometimes obese characters, celebrate the pleasure of the flesh and voluptuousness. He moved to Paris and learned sculpture in the mid-1970s. Fernando Botero, one of the most recognized artists of his generation, exhibited his bronze works notably on the Champs-Elysées in 1992, in New York in 2006 on the tortures of Abu Ghraib prison and in 2007 at the National Museum fine arts in Quebec.

- source: http://evene.lefigaro.fr/celebre/biographie/fernando-botero-15865.php