Fernando Botero
Art should be an oasis: a place or refuge from the hardness of life.Collection: Art
My popularity has to do with the divorce between modern art, where everything is obscure, and the viewer who often feels he needs a professor to tell them whether it's good or not. I believe a painting has to talk directly to the viewer, with composition, color and design, without a professor to explain it.Collection: Design
Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.
The circus leaves a sweet memory.
My work is a self-portrait of my mind, a prism of my convictions.
Nobody ever told me, 'Art is this.' This was good luck in a way because I would have had to spend half of my life forgetting everything that I had been told, which is what happens with most students in schools of fine arts.
An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it.
There's nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it's a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.
The circus is a global theme. It exists in all parts of the world - maybe not in Africa, but it exists in Asia in all parts. In Latin America, it's difficult to find a person who hasn't gone to the circus.
You paint what you know best; what you went through as a teenager and child. My world is the one I got to know in Medellin; I never paint anything else other than that.
I often think about death, and it saddens me to leave this world and not be able to paint more. I love it so much.
Art is always an exaggeration in some sense; in color, in form, even in theme, etc... but it has always been this way. It is the same with the nature of some works by Giotto or Massacio, or the color of life as expressed by Van Gogh.
I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.
Art is important because when people start to forget, art reminds them what happened. Like 'Guernica.' People would not remember the tragedy of Guernica today if it were not for that painting.
I have the sensation of doing something good for people, more than being a trendy artist or a successful artist.
The circus allows one to be logical and unreal at the same time. In the circus, all is possible: there can be a man with two heads or a character with a green face.
I had wanted to be a sculptor throughout life, but to do so, I had to stop painting.
I have seen Colonial churches since I was very small, Colonial painting and polychrome sculpture. And that was all I saw. There was not a single modern painting in any museum, not a Picasso, not a Braque, not a Chagall. The museums had Colombian painters from the eighteenth century and, of course, I saw Pre-Columbian art. That was my exposure.
I follow politics very closely. I read several newspapers every day.
In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.
In the '60s, I did many satirical portraits of dictators.
The only duty an artist has is in the quality of the art. There is no moral obligation to denounce. An artist confronted with a tremendous injustice sometimes feels inclined to say something. Denouncing the situation is the artist's choice.
An artist is born like a priest is born. If they are born an artist, I would tell them art is not a game: it is something very serious which completely requires everything you have to give.
People say, 'What a discipline, painting so much.' I say, 'No, I love it.' Nothing amuses me as much as my work. To have discipline would be not to paint.
I'm the most Colombian of the Colombians, even though I've lived 47 years outside of Colombia. I've lived 13 years in New York, and I never did a painting about New York. I've lived in France more than 30 years, and I've never painted Paris.
I love my country, and it hurts not to be able to see my country, as I did for so many years. I hope that I will one day be able to live in a peaceful Colombia.
I had an uncle who took me to the ring in Medellin when I was 15 years old. In school, we had someone who taught us how to bullfight.
Before anything else, I started painting bulls and matadors. That was my initiation to paint.
Bullfights have so much color. Not just the matador but also the bull, the arena, and the public. It's all very festive.
Bullfights are a very cultural thing. I know many people think it's cruel, but so many things are cruel. Hunting, the electric chair, wars. These are all cruel things as well.
I believe that it's better to have a conviction, believe strongly in something, and then the convictions create a style that reflects your mentality.
Expression without culture is flat. Many artists come out of art school and start doing things that don't last. They are audacious because of ignorance. They are irresponsible.
All my life, my girlfriends are always skinny. Beauty in art has nothing to do with beauty in reality. Why do you like primitive art? Because there is beauty in the deformity. Sometimes paintings that people consider realistic are not at all. Raphael figures look realistic, but in real life, they were deformed.
I love art so much because of curiosity. At the start of a painting, I know 10 percent of what the painting will be, and then I have to improvise the whole thing.
All the animals I've painted always have a relationship with man. I have been told that part of the knowledge of the human anatomy comes from animals.
Man needs music, literature, and painting - all those oases of perfection that make up art - to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.Collection: Art
Art is a spiritual, immaterial respite from the hardships of life.Collection: Life
When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting.Collection: Art
In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.Collection: Art
The richness of an artist is the fusion of influences that have shaped his life and work.Collection: Artist
I describe in a realistic form a nonrealistic Reality.Collection: Reality
A painted landscape is always more beautiful than a real one, because there's more there. Everything is more sensual, and one takes refuge in its beauty. And man needs spiritual expression and nourishing. It's why even in the prehistoric era, people would scrawl pictures of bison on the walls of caves. Man needs music, literature, and painting-all those oases of perfection that make up art-to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.Collection: Beautiful
I create my subjects somehow visualizing them in my style. I start as a poet, put the colors and composition down on canvas as a painter, but finish my work as a sculptor taking delight in caressing the forms.Collection: Color
I often think about death and it saddens me to leave this world and not be able to paint more. I love it so much.Collection: Thinking
I'm a tireless worker; I don't consider painting a work, it is not an obligation, I do it for pleasure; I haven't found anything that amuses me more than painting.Collection: Painting
Sculptures permit me to create real volume One can touch the forms, one can give them smoothness, the sensuality that one wants.Collection: Real
I work more now perhaps because I know that there is so little time left.Collection: Littles
A painted landscape is always more beautiful than a real one, because there's more there. Everything is more sensual, and one takes refuge in its beauty.Collection: Beauty
Man needs spiritual expression and nourishing... even in the prehistoric era, people would scrawl pictures of bison on the walls of caves.Collection: Spiritual