Press Release May 22, 2006

The Hague Sculpture 2006

Lange Voorhout in The Hague

June 1 - August 31, 2006

BOTERO in The Hague Sculpture 2006

Sculptures in the open air by Fernando Botero on the Lange Voorhout

"My sculptures do not have any special message, neither of a social nor of any other nature. My sculptures have no symbolic significance. I am interested in form; soft, round surfaces that emphasize the sensuality of my work."

Botero in The Hague

This year, fourteen sculptures by Botero, cast in Pietrasanta (Italy) especially for The Hague Sculpture 2006, will be on show at the Lange Voorhout, the most beautiful boulevard of The Hague. Most of the sculptures are over eight feet in height and the sculptures weigh between 660 and 1,000 lbs.

Sensational sculpture exhibitions of Fernando Botero have been held in the open air in numerous cities since the beginning of the nineties, and the voluminous carressability of his sculptures can be seen in Paris, Monte Carlo, Chicago, Madrid, Venice, Mexico City, New York, Stockholm, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lisbon and Tokyo.

Fernando Botero

The Colombian sculptor/painter Fernando Botero Angulo (1932), is one of the best known artists of Latin America; he was initially particularly active as a painter; only later devoting an increasing amount of his time and energy to sculpture. Sculptures that with their explicitly alienating enlarged reality of human and animal figures evoke admiration or aversion, but leave no-one unmoved.

Botero lives and works alternately in his atelier in Paris and in Pietrasanta (Italy). He moved to Europe at the beginning of the fifties, first as a student, at the Academia San Fernando in Madrid, and later as an up-and-coming artist in Paris and Italy. In Spain, he studied the old masters, his great role models Velasquez, Goya and Rubens. In Italy, he made in-depth studies of the work of artists of the early Renaissance, such as Pierro della Francesca, Uccello and Masaccio. The painting 'Still Life with Mandolin' of 1957, self-assuredly showed the typical Botero style for the first time; the enlargement of his subjects, giving his world on paper, on canvas and three-dimensionally in his sculptures voluptuous mega-curves. "I was interested in monumentality. My work expresses the idea of monumentality, of sensuality and of fullness of form. That has nothing to do with the size. I do not follow any special method; I make this large and that small, it happens on its own. My feeling for form and sensuality sends me in the direction required."

'Boterism'

Inspired by the universal attraction of undisputed climaxes in art history and by archetypal themes that appear to resurface in all cultures, Botero's sculptures pursue a mythic timelessness. In the sculptor's work, he mixes South-American culture (Indian culture, the street-noise of wall paintings with a social-political charge, the magical-spiritual experience of religion and folk culture/folklore of Latin America) with the classical heritage of Western art history. Botero translates the hypnotizing figuration of Egyptian art, the sensual form language of fertility cults, the perfection of the early Renaissance and the Baroque with references to the classics completely into his own style and working method. A style that could almost be characterised as a new variety of extreme manierism in contemporary sculpture: Boterism.

Info-center BOTERO / The Hague Sculpture 2006

The Botero/Hague Sculpture Info-center is located in one of the two new front galleries of Pulchri Studio (The Hague). The info-center provides information on the exhibition, guided tours and other cultural exhibitions in The Hague linked to the Botero exhibition. A documentary on the artist can be viewed and special Botero articles are available.

More Information

For more information and visual material please contact Irma Jansen at the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, 212-370-7360 ext. 24,ibjansen@holland.com .