Columbian Fernando BOTERO paints Abu Ghraib series, a la "Guernica"

[UTUSN]

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/blog/2005/04/fernando-botero-paints-abu-ghraib.html

.... Botero is a successful artist who has achieved popular acclaim as well as recognition from the art establishment. But lately his cheery and mild-mannered paintings have suddenly turned into works of profound and biting social commentary. Six years ago he began painting the bloody reality of his native Columbia, and just last year he exhibited paintings in Colombia’s capital of Bogotá that focused on his nation’s 40-year-old guerilla war. However, Fernando Botero’s latest paintings go beyond anything he’s ever created in the past. He’s completed his masterwork, a suite of 50 large oil paintings depicting the horrors perpetrated by Americans at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

"I, like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity, especially because the United States is supposed to be this model of compassion." The artist was so upset about what the US had done in Iraq that he set out to create a series of paintings that would forever etch the crime upon the collective consciousness of humanity. What Botero has achieved is nothing short of a contemporary equivalent to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, the masterwork painted in outrage over the aerial bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War. Said Botero, "No one would have ever remembered the horrors of Guernica if not for the painting." And no one will ever forget the vision of hell Botero has committed to canvas with these startling oil paintings. Each work is titled Abu Ghraib and given a number from 1 to 50 to set them apart. Not that they need to be differentiated, because each oil is a unique and bone chilling representation of what US soldiers did to their prisoners behind Abu Ghraib’s silent and impenetrable walls. ....

UPDATE: Botero’s Abu Ghraib paintings and drawings will be exhibited at the Doe Library, located at the University of California, Berkeley, from January 29th to March 25th, 2007. Click here for more information. ALSO: Jack Rasmussen, the Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, D.C., announced on his web log that Botero's paintings will be exhibited at the American University Museum from November 6th to December 30th, 2007. ]

********UNQUOTE*******

[Swamp Rat]

1. me encanta el Botero

:kick:

[UTUSN]

2. We DUers, who so appreciate your talent, would easily see the connection!1 n/t

[Swamp Rat]

3. Gracias

Thanks. I have been a Botero fan for many years, and I hope to meet him some day.