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Lot Essay
“I am interested in quiet color, not excited or feverish color. I have always considered that great art conveys tranquility and, in that sense, I seek that even in color.” -Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero’s Florero elevates the usually diminutive intimate genre of still life painting to a heroic scale. Pushed up against the picture plane, a startlingly large vase of flowers towers above the viewer and nearly bursts through the canvas. This tightly packed bouquet of more than twenty varieties of daisies, dahlias, peonies and camelias is an exuberant display of the artist’s painterly prowess. Rendered with acute attention to detail, the distinctive blooms include all parts of the flower: petals, sepals, stamens and pistils. Close observation reveals dewy droplets settling on petals and bees and flies buzzing amongst the floral array.
Botero manages a monumental still life that is both steeped in art historical tradition and definitively his own creation. As a young aspiring artist in the early 1950s, Botero ventured to Europe where he immersed himself in studying the Old Masters and 20th century modernists. Europe proved transformative for Botero, converting him into an insatiable student of art history. The lessons absorbed from wandering the Prado, Uffizi and Louvre in those early days would reverberate throughout his career. In Florero, Botero nods to the Golden Age of Dutch still life painting, with artists like Jan Davidsz de Heem, renowned for precise renderings of flowers, fruits and insects. De Heem’s opulent still lifes, in particular, often fill the entirety of his canvases and are notable for their brilliant use of varied color. Pop Art depictions of flowers may also have been on Botero’s mind at the time that he painted Florero in 1970. Having moved to New York in 1960 to immerse himself in the center of the art world, Botero would have had ample opportunity to see Andy Warhol’s Flowers series first on view at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964.
Botero’s move to New York in 1960 was a big gamble. He left his family behind in Bogotá and moved to the city with no money, no friends and little English. In the twelve years that he lived in the city, however, he went from impoverished obscurity to meteoric success with the Museum of Modern Art acquiring two of his most significant paintings and prominent dealers supporting him and successfully promoting his work. He also encountered racist criticism and remained ostracized by those who were part of the larger art movements in vogue at the time. While the New York years were fraught for the artist, it was also a period of tremendous growth. Botero came into his own in New York, finding his singular voice as an artist and producing some of his most significant works like Florero.
Rendered in Botero’s signature pastel palette of the 1960s and 70s, Florero’s plentiful blooms appear in chromatic harmony. A consummate colorist, Botero usually painted with a restrictive palette, employing a limited number of colors in each canvas that evenly reverberate across his compositions. Florero, however, is striking for its sheer number of hues; rose, gold, auburn, cloudy blues and frosty whites are set against a backdrop of deep jade. Here the artist clearly reveled and succeeded in achieving a cohesive symphony in a great variety of color. At once vibrant and serene, Florero expresses one of the central tenet’s of Botero’s practice: “I am interested in quiet colour, not excited or feverish colour. I have always considered that great art conveys tranquility and, in that sense, I seek that even in colour.” (F. Botero quoted in, A. M. Escallón, “From the Inside out: An Interview with Fernando Botero” in, Botero: New Works on Canvas, New York, 1997, p. 48).
Fernando Botero’s Florero elevates the usually diminutive intimate genre of still life painting to a heroic scale. Pushed up against the picture plane, a startlingly large vase of flowers towers above the viewer and nearly bursts through the canvas. This tightly packed bouquet of more than twenty varieties of daisies, dahlias, peonies and camelias is an exuberant display of the artist’s painterly prowess. Rendered with acute attention to detail, the distinctive blooms include all parts of the flower: petals, sepals, stamens and pistils. Close observation reveals dewy droplets settling on petals and bees and flies buzzing amongst the floral array.
Botero manages a monumental still life that is both steeped in art historical tradition and definitively his own creation. As a young aspiring artist in the early 1950s, Botero ventured to Europe where he immersed himself in studying the Old Masters and 20th century modernists. Europe proved transformative for Botero, converting him into an insatiable student of art history. The lessons absorbed from wandering the Prado, Uffizi and Louvre in those early days would reverberate throughout his career. In Florero, Botero nods to the Golden Age of Dutch still life painting, with artists like Jan Davidsz de Heem, renowned for precise renderings of flowers, fruits and insects. De Heem’s opulent still lifes, in particular, often fill the entirety of his canvases and are notable for their brilliant use of varied color. Pop Art depictions of flowers may also have been on Botero’s mind at the time that he painted Florero in 1970. Having moved to New York in 1960 to immerse himself in the center of the art world, Botero would have had ample opportunity to see Andy Warhol’s Flowers series first on view at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964.
Botero’s move to New York in 1960 was a big gamble. He left his family behind in Bogotá and moved to the city with no money, no friends and little English. In the twelve years that he lived in the city, however, he went from impoverished obscurity to meteoric success with the Museum of Modern Art acquiring two of his most significant paintings and prominent dealers supporting him and successfully promoting his work. He also encountered racist criticism and remained ostracized by those who were part of the larger art movements in vogue at the time. While the New York years were fraught for the artist, it was also a period of tremendous growth. Botero came into his own in New York, finding his singular voice as an artist and producing some of his most significant works like Florero.
Rendered in Botero’s signature pastel palette of the 1960s and 70s, Florero’s plentiful blooms appear in chromatic harmony. A consummate colorist, Botero usually painted with a restrictive palette, employing a limited number of colors in each canvas that evenly reverberate across his compositions. Florero, however, is striking for its sheer number of hues; rose, gold, auburn, cloudy blues and frosty whites are set against a backdrop of deep jade. Here the artist clearly reveled and succeeded in achieving a cohesive symphony in a great variety of color. At once vibrant and serene, Florero expresses one of the central tenet’s of Botero’s practice: “I am interested in quiet colour, not excited or feverish colour. I have always considered that great art conveys tranquility and, in that sense, I seek that even in colour.” (F. Botero quoted in, A. M. Escallón, “From the Inside out: An Interview with Fernando Botero” in, Botero: New Works on Canvas, New York, 1997, p. 48).