Artist: Fernando Botero
Title: Botero: The Bullfight
Author: José Manuel Caballero Bonald
Publisher: Rizzoli
Year: 1990
ISBN: 978-0847812486
Format: Hardcover, 13 ¼ x 12, 213 pages, 148 color plates
The oeuvre of Fernando Botero is marked by his heavily stylized, exaggerated, and poetic painted representations of the human figure, animals, and still lifes. In the universe of Botero, the Spanish tradition la carrida, or the bullfight, presents time and time again.
With Botero: The Bullfight, José Manuel Caballero Bonald examines Botero’s interest in painting scenes of the bullfight, which began for him at age eleven when his uncle enrolled him in the local school of tauromachy. In 1984, Botero began exclusively portraying the subject of bullfighting in his work, highlighting the spectacle as a mythical drama.
