Botero celebrated with an open-air exhibition in Rome

ROME

The daughter of the late Colombian artist Fernando Botero has helped to turn the streets and piazzas of the Italian capital into an open-air museum to display eight of her father’s famously voluminous, whimsical sculptures.

The exhibition was organized as a tribute to Botero, who died Sept. 15, 2023, at 91 in Monaco, where he kept a studio. The artist also lived for many years in the Italian town of Pietrasanta in the Tuscany region, where he was buried next to his third wife, the artist Sophia Vari.

“I am sure my father would be very moved because Italy was always like a second home country for him,’’ his daughter, Lina Botero, told private Italian television TV2000.

Botero created all of the statues shown in the exhibition while he was in Italy. His affection for Italy came in part from his artistic affinity for the Renaissance masters.

While his imposing bronze sculptures have been shown in parks and avenues of many European and Latin American capitals, this is the first time they are being seen on this scale in Rome. The exhibition closes Oct. 1.

Art lovers can follow a Botero trail starting from the central Villa Borghese park, where Lying Woman gazes across Rome’s rooftops toward St. Peter’s Basilica from the Pincio Terrace. In the Piazza del Popolo, the sculptures Adam and Eve face each other. Horse with Bridle is on the central Roman shopping street, the Via del Corso, and the journey ends near the Piazza di Spagna with Seated Woman.

“We could tell from afar those are Boteros,” said Sara Belloni, a resident who paused to photograph Adam and Eve from below. “The aesthetic is completely the opposite compared to what one usually sees around. Where skinny is beautiful, he does the exact opposite.”

Lorenzo Zichichi, who represents one of the exhibition’s co-organizers, said it would be a mistake to call the sculptures fat.

“Botero has always said that he has never painted a fat woman and he has never sculpted a fat woman," said Zichichi, president of the Il Cigno publishing house, which presented the exhibition along with the Fernando Botero Foundation and BAM art events. “What fascinated him was the volume."