GAGA FOR BOTERO

A lot of incredible people have sprung out of Colombia to attain global notoriety, whether for evil or pure evil but no other Colombian stands out for me more or better than painter and sculptor Fernando Botero. Still alive and living in his hometown of Medellin, this man’s depiction of his reality has blown my mind for decades, ever since I discovered him in a coffee table book my parents were once given at a dinner party.

Arriving at the Museos Del Banco De La Republican, delightfully surprised by this bit of modern architecture, looking both alien and right at home in the old town, we looked right…

…and then left…

…to make sure we were in the right place. Finally, we entered and found a collection of 208 of the inflating artist’s works, in all mediums, donated a few years back to the institution by the man himself, the largest collection of his works in the world, properly located in his beloved home country.

The people represented, the fruits and vegetable, the animals and inanimates, their shapes, their dynamism, their meaning in a world obsessed with edge was a wonderful thing to see, all in one room, all in one building…

So much to see in fact that we had to take a little nap, on the cushioned benches in the courtyard, not a bad place to be…

I heartily recommend saving your afternoon to have lunch in the area and spend the rest of it here, among the impressive. Even more-so because of the rest of the collection, populated with some Freud…