Fernando Botero

Celebrating human life in all its physicality, Colombian artist Fernando Botero's drawings and watercolors feature the same characters as his oil paintings. Corpulent nudes, lovers, evil dictators, pompous lawyers and generals, buxom society ladies, macho gents, village musicians, self-important clerics, intent card players and dour yet benign nuns are all protagonists in the comically ironic drama the artist finds all around him. His figures, inflated as if by helium, mirror his fellow Colombians' passivity but also their self-possession, nobility and the strong transformative impulses simmering beneath their placid exteriors. His pulsating still lifes speak of abundance and bounty. In this lavishly illustrated monograph, Sullivan ( Botero: Sculpture ) traces the constant dialogue in Botero's work with European Old Masters and with Latin American colonial baroque art. (July)