ROME  - On April 19, 1932, Luis Fernando Botero Angulo was born in Medellin, Colombia, the second of two brothers, in the home of David Botero Mejía and Flora Angulo de Botero. At 89, after a life dedicated to painting and sculpture, Botero is considered the most important living artist in the world.

  With his unique style characterized by the enlargement and exaggeration of the volumes of paintings and sculptures, playing with aesthetics and strengthened by the use of art as a platform to express simple and complex situations with a social background and situations seen with the eyes of a child, he has earned a place in history and in the world of universal art.

  In his works the religious and sacred theme is recurring, which he represented in sumptuous cathedrals, domes and facades and marvellous paintings of saints, the Virgin and Jesus Christ, priests, bishops and high prelates of the church.

  For Fernando Botero there is a country that marked his life and it is Italy, since, as his daughter Lina tells, one day in Madrid he saw the work of Piero della Francesca in a book. He bought the book and decided that this was the art he belonged to. He went to Florence and as a true 'self-taught' began his training, referring to the Renaissance.

  When he started making sculptures, he went to Pietrasanta in Tuscany and, despite being a citizen of the world, that city became his second home because in addition to the beauty and cultural and artistic value it was an ideal base as it was only 25 kilometres from Carrara, where the famous white marble is extracted. He chose a beautiful house in the square of Pietrasanta which also became his shop and a meeting place for the whole family, especially in the pleasant months of the Italian summer. He currently resides in the Principality of Monaco.

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