![\"Monalisa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Monalisa-a-los-Trece-An\u0303os-1959--823x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFernando Botero left his indelible mark on New York, in the 14 monumental sculptures that lined Park Avenue in 1993, as well as the Adam and Eve statues that still stand at the entrance to Time Warner Center. But the city also left its imprint on the Colombian master. A new exhibition is uncovering how Botero\u2019s years in New York helped cultivate the visual language that would become his signature.<\/p>\n
\u201cBotero in New York\u201d is the first exhibition at Sotheby\u2019s Breuer headquarters to be dedicated to a single artist. Organized in partnership with the Botero family, the non-selling show brings together more than 20 rarely seen paintings and sculptures from his archive and other private collections, many of which are going on view in New York for the first time. In particular, it will trace the development of \u201cBoterismo,\u201d the artist\u2019s singular style defined by voluminous forms that evoke strength and sensuality.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a particular resonance in presenting this project in New York,\u201d Anna Di Stasi, Sotheby\u2019s global head of Latin American art, told me over email. \u201cBotero arrived in the city at a moment when abstraction dominated the conversation around contemporary painting. His response was not simply to reject that world, but to develop another way of being modern through figuration, scale, surface, and the reworking of art-historical sources.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fernando Botero, Monalisa a Los Trece An\u0303os (Mona Lisa, Age Thirteen), 1959. Courtesy of Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The Village Years<\/p>\n
The Botero that landed in New York in the late 1950s was already a roving man. From his native Medell\u00edn, he had sailed for Europe at age 20 on a voyage funded by his first solo show in Bogot\u00e1. He studied at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, visited the Louvre in Paris, and immersed himself in the Renaissance greats in Florence. To make ends meet, he sold his copies of works by Diego Vel\u00e1zquez and Francisco Goya on the streets.<\/p>\n
In New York, Botero settled in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood already populated by Beat poets and abstract painters. One fateful day in 1961, he happened to encounter Dorothy Miller<\/a>, the first professional curator at the Museum of Modern Art, in his building. Though Miller was there to visit another artist, she left with Botero\u2019s Mona Lisa, Age Twelve<\/a> (1959).<\/p>\n Fernando Botero. Photo courtesy of Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n The acquisition opened doors for Botero in the city and beyond. His circle grew to include French gallerist Claude Bernard, Swiss art dealer Ernst Beyeler, and Marlborough Gallery\u2019s Pierre Levai. At the same time, his art thrived: Botero produced works such as Pope Leo X (After Raphael) in 1964 and The Presidential Family in 1967, developing his voluptuous figures and flat colors so that they harbored sharp critique, wry humor, and emotional weight.<\/p>\n Remarkably, even as Abstract Expressionism and Pop thrived in the city, Botero remained devoted to figuration. Though his style made him \u201ca leper\u201d amid the \u201cdictatorship of abstract art\u201d by his admission<\/a>, he persisted\u2014and prevailed. His debut exhibition at Marlborough in 1972 sold out. \u201cI just make paintings and sculptures the way I like,\u201d he told Artforum<\/a> in 1985.<\/p>\n \u201cHe made figuration itself the site of radical invention,\u201d Di Stasi said. \u201cHe remained committed to recognizable subjects, but transformed the way bodies, objects, and space behaved within the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n Fernando Botero, Apotheosis of Ramo\u0301n Hoyos (1961). Courtesy of Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n New York Revisited<\/p>\n The artist\u2019s distinctive visual language garnered him a solid collector base in his lifetime and his market has grown more international since his death in 2023<\/a>. According to the Artnet Price Database, auction sales of his work reached an all-time high of $53.8 million in 2024, the same year in which his auction record<\/a> was set at Christie\u2019s for the $5.1 million sale of his 1979 picture, The Musicians.<\/p>\n The Sotheby\u2019s exhibition offers selections from his formative New York period that reveal the genesis of this style. Among the earlier works are Mona Lisa, Age Thirteen (1959), a close cousin of the canvas that MoMA acquired, and Apotheosis of Ram\u00f3n Hoyos (1959), an ode to the Colombian cyclist that features Botero\u2019s rare engagement with abstraction. The artist\u2019s bold reimagining of art history shows up: Sunflowers (1977) renders Vincent van Gogh\u2019s choice subject<\/a> newly rotund, while Still Life with Watermelon (1965) injects zesty color and volume into the Spanish still life tradition.<\/p>\n Picnic (1973), meanwhile, is making its public debut. Set in a verdant woodland, the scene is centered on two Boterian nudes reclining on a mat, the contents of their picnic basket neatly depicted. It\u2019s a low-key nod to \u00c9douard Manet\u2019s Luncheon on the Grass (1863), the tranquil scene giving way to more layered reflections of class and manners.<\/p>\n Fernando Botero, Sunflowers (1977). Courtesy of Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n The collective effect of these works, Di Stasi said, challenges the notion that Botero\u2019s style appeared overnight and remained unchanged. Instead, the exhibition presents a glimpse of \u201ca young artist testing, revising, and consolidating a visual language.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBotero in New York\u201d is on view July 22\u2013September 7 at Sotheby\u2019s New York, 945 Madison Ave, New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fernando Botero left his indelible mark on New York, in the 14 monumental sculptures that lined Park Avenue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[110964,110963,6072,77094,110966,110968,110969,10341,110962,110967,110970,39392,9,11,10,110965,13851,11844],"class_list":["post-290326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-abstract-expressionism","tag-anna-di-stasi","tag-art-history","tag-artnet-news","tag-boterismo","tag-diego-velazquez","tag-dorothy-miller","tag-exhibitions","tag-fernando-botero","tag-goya","tag-marlborough-gallery","tag-museum-of-modern-art","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-pop-art","tag-sothebys","tag-vincent-van-gogh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fernando](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Fernando-Botero-Archive-Shot-816x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Fernando](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Apotheosis-of-Ramo\u0301n-Hoyos-1961--1024x564.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Sunflowers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Sunflowers-1977-850x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n