Nassau CountyMuseum of Art Showcases A Major Exhibition of Fernando Botero

Written by Doris Meadows Monday, 25 July 2011 23:10

Roslyn Harbor, NY - Nassau County Museum of Art   (NCMA) presents a major exhibition that showcases work by one of the most honored Latin American artists working today. Featuring an artist best known for his voluptuous figures, Fernando Botero includes a range of paintings, drawings and monumental sculpture that exemplify Botero’s most familiar themes: commonplace scenes of everyday life, life in the bedroom, life of the streets and people rapt in the excitement of music or family activities. Throughout, Botero’s characters are seen in their “Botero-esque” girth and grandeur.   Works by this famed artist were previously seen at the museum in a major 2005 exhibition. Fernando Botero opens at NCMA on March 13, 2010 and remains on view through May 23, 2010. The exhibition is sponsored by David Benrimon Fine Art LLC.

Botero’s smooth rounded depictions of people and animals exhibit a comic disregard for correct proportions. This skewing of form is central to works by Botero.

A native of Colombia, Botero has resided in New York, Paris and Tuscany. In the 1960s, he began to achieve acclaim for his satirical paintings of oversized, flesh figures with large limbs and small bodies. In 1971 he began making sculptures as well, an example of which is Man on Horseback —a self-assured gentleman in a suit and bowler hat, his legs as large as those of the horse. This work greets visitors along the wooded path leading to the museum and is a permanent part of NCMA’s Sculpture Park.

Regarding distortion as the essence of art, he has said: “In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.”

Botero’s work and vision were honed in his studies of art history. He was strongly influenced by the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque period, most especially by Diego Velázquez, and by the monumental quality of the figures of Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Ingres and Rivera.   Like these artists before him, Botero strives to create sensuality through form.

Botero is additionally one of the most well-known and respected of the late 20th-century still-life painters. His representations of fruits, flowers, vegetables, sweets, meats and cheeses embody many of the characteristics that are observed in his other subjects. They display a marked engagement with sensuality. There is a sense of the sacramental or the ritual in many of these paintings. A number of Botero’s still life paintings have particular resonance within the context of Colombia, often displaying distinctively Colombian meals, birthday tables or references to other occasions celebrated in that country.

“Art is deformation” said Fernando Botero

Nassau County Museum of Art is located at One Museum Drive (just off Northern Boulevard, Route 25A, two traffic lights west of Glen Cove Rd.) in Roslyn Harbor. Hours are 11 am to 4:45 pm Tuesday through Sunday. Docent-led tours of the exhibition are offered at 2 pm each day. Admission to the main building, the Arnold & Joan Saltzman Fine Art Building, is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors (62+) and $4 for students and children ages 4-12; includes admission to The Art Space for Children. Members are always admitted free. There is a $2 parking fee on weekends (members free). The Museum Shop is open all museum hours. For information, call (516) 484-9337 or log onto www.nassaumuseum.org.

Nassau County Museum of Art is chartered under the laws of New York State as a not-for-profit private educational institution and museum. A privately elected board of trustees is responsible for its governance. The museum is funded through income derived from admissions, parking, membership, special events and private and corporate donations as well as federal and state grants.