LATIN AMERICA:

HIS COLOMBIAN ROOTS

“The thing is that the art - and the artist - must have roots in his own land, in his own life: my life is in Colombia, and my land is Colombia.

There, the lush nature, the music, the politics, and the classes of power shape its history. When painting, I seek all this among my memories and I reinvent it in my studio, giving it new life, new colours, and exaggerated shapes.

Everything I shape in my paintings reflects a world known during my youth. It’s a kind of nostalgia, an obsession, that converted the central theme of my work. [...] I lived in New York for five years and for a long time in Europe, too, but nothing could change my perspective, my nature, and my Latin-American spirit. Communion with my country is total”.

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Fernando Botero