Fernando Botero with white hair, a moustache and round dark-rimmed glasses, in front of an easel. — Fernando Botero in 2018. Photo: Culturespaces, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Fernando Botero valuation

Inflated every figure, fruit and horse he painted, and said he was painting volume, not fat.

Fernando Botero was born in Medellín in 1932, was sent to a school for matadors as a boy, and had his first exhibition in Bogotá in 1951.

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What a work by Fernando Botero is worth

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Bio

Fernando Botero was born in Medellín in 1932, was sent to a school for matadors as a boy, and had his first exhibition in Bogotá in 1951. He studied in Madrid and Florence, where the Italian Renaissance painters, Piero della Francesca above all, set the course of his work, and around 1956 he arrived at the swollen, rounded forms that became his signature. He painted Colombian life, bishops, generals, brothels, still lifes and versions of Velázquez and Rubens, and from the 1970s made monumental bronzes. Later series dealt with Colombia's drug violence and, in 2005, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He died in Monaco in 2023.

The market spans unique oils on canvas, a very large body of drawings and watercolours, and bronzes in small editions, usually of six with artist's proofs, at sizes from tabletop to monumental. For a bronze the cast number, foundry mark and size identify the work, and the same model at two sizes is two quite different propositions. Botero is extensively forged, in both paintings and sculpture, so a documented exhibition history or gallery provenance matters a great deal.

At a glance

Born: 19 April 1932, Medellín
Died: 15 September 2023, Monaco
Movement: Contemporary art

The Salón, the Museum of Modern Art and the Plaza Botero

In 1958 Botero won first prize at the Salón de Artistas Colombianos, and in 1961 the Museum of Modern Art in New York bought his Mona Lisa, Age Twelve. In 1992 his monumental bronzes were shown along the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

In 2000 he gave his own collection to found the Museo Botero in Bogotá and gave works to the Museo de Antioquia in Medellín, whose square, the Plaza Botero, holds 23 of his sculptures.

The mandolin, New York and La paloma de la paz

Botero's work was first shown in a group exhibition in 1948, and he worked as a set designer and a newspaper illustrator before his first one-man show, at the Galería Leo Matiz in Bogotá in 1951. In Madrid he studied at the Academia de San Fernando and copied Goya and Velázquez in the Prado, selling the copies in the street. The enlarged forms began with Still Life with Mandolin: drawing the instrument, he made the sound hole very small, and the mandolin looked gigantic.

He moved to New York in 1961 and lived there for a dozen years before settling in Paris, where from 1973 he made sculpture. His gift to the Museo Botero in 2000 comprised 123 of his own works and 85 from his collection, including pieces by Chagall, Picasso and Robert Rauschenberg. In 2012 the International Sculpture Center gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2016 he gave the Colombian government La paloma de la paz to mark the peace agreement.

Best auction results

The Musicians $5.13m: Oil on canvas, 1979 · New York · 9 November 2023; Publicly reported; The artist's auction record for a painting.
Horse $4.9m: Bronze, 1992 · New York · 20 November 2024; Publicly reported; The artist's auction record for a sculpture.

Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.

Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.