A documentary by Canadian director Don Millar chronicling the life of Colombian artist Fernando Botero.
Fernando Botero (1932–2023) made over 3,000 paintings in his signature grotesque-comic style, which is one of the most recognisable in the world.
Don Millar reveals the story of the artist from birth to the final years of his life. On screen he brings together Botero’s admirers, his children, and his allies with fierce critics of the artist. The subject of the argument is his style: he assigns everything he depicts, be it landscapes, people or objects, a grotesque volume. For his associates this is a sign of great ability, adherence to an idea, and belief in his selected method. For his opponents it is an element of commercial desirability and indicates the low intellectual value of such art. The director allows the viewer freedom of opinion regarding the artist’s work but surrounds his figure with a bewitching romanticism. Fascinated by the art of the past, Botero borrowed a great deal from the philosophy and view of painting of the Renaissance masters. He followed this path despite the appearance of revolutionary ideas in art such as abstractionism and conceptualism, placing the heroes of the fifteenth century, such as Piero della Francesca, at the top of his pantheon. His faithfulness to the ideas of the past was often expressed literally. He created copies of works from past epochs, mixing the distinguishing features of the original and elements of his own style. On Botero’s canvases, the Mona Lisa and Federico da Montefeltro are transformed into voluminous and light versions of themselves.
Millar pays particular attention to Botero’s activities as a patron and his support of art and museums in Colombia. His home city of Medellin was infamous in the late twentieth century as a center for crime and drug wars. Botero created the figure of a dove, a metaphor of peace, and donated it to the city. On the day the sculpture was installed there was an explosion on the square, killing and injuring many people and damaging the sculpture. He then created a second sculpture, and the two copies were placed next to each other, showing the beauty of peace and the horror of war and lawlessness. However, despite the inclusion of such painful facts from Botero’s biography, the story of the Colombian artist, as told by Don Millar, is a fairy tale about a great creator.
The film will be shown in Spanish and English with Russian subtitles.
The film will be introduced by art historian Elena Nadezhdina.
Botero
Director Don Millar
Canada, 2108. 82 min.
18+