Italy is honouring the artist Fernando Botero with an outdoor exhibition of his voluminous sculptures across Rome. The exhibition is a tribute to the Colombian who died in September last year in Monaco, where he kept a studio. 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 organised as a tribute to Botero, who died September 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.
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 sculpt.