Front: ‘Resurrecion de la carne’ – On the reverse: reclining coup

• Fernando Botero’s profound reinterpretation of Luca Signorelli’s famous Renaissance fresco ‘The Damned’ •In a dramatic composition of figures, the Colombian artist combines his unmistakable body forms with subtle humour. • Sheet worked on both sides, with an additional drawing of a couple on the reverse The great masters of European art history have been a lifelong source of inspiration for Fernando Botero. As early as the 1950s, the young Colombian travelled to Europe, studied the Spanish masters at the Prado in Madrid and devoted himself intensively to Italian Renaissance painting in Florence. He was particularly fascinated by the monumental treatment of the human form and the spatial presence of the figures, which were to have a lasting influence on his own artistic development. This drawing from 1971 references Luca Signorelli’s famous fresco ‘The Damned’ (1499–1505) in the Cappella di San Brizio in Orvieto Cathedral. Botero takes up the dramatically entwined bodies, the winged demons and the dynamic composition of the Renaissance master, yet translates them into his very own visual language. Signorelli’s muscular, anatomically precise figures are transformed into rounded, voluminous figures, whose soft physicality lends a surprisingly humorous touch to the originally menacing scene. Botero is not concerned with merely imitating an art-historical model. Rather, he appropriates the artist’s visual world and develops an independent interpretation from it, in which his admiration for the Old Masters is just as palpable as his delight in the playful alteration of proportions and forms. The drawing on the reverse of the sheet provides a charming contrast. A couple standing close together, captured with just a few confident strokes, reveals a calmer, almost tender side to Botero. Here, too, the voluptuous body forms dominate the composition. Thus, the sheet, worked on both sides, unites two distinct visual worlds, both equally shaped by Botero’s unmistakable conception of the human figure. | 1932 Medellín/Kolumbien – Monaco 2023 | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Arbeiten auf Papier | Nummer: 26x1956 | Provenance: Galerie Godula Buchholz, München, verso auf der Rahmenrückwand mit dem Stempel; Privatsammlung, Nordrhein-Westfalen; Privatsammlung, Nordrhein-Westfalen, durch Erbfolge an den jetzigen Besitzer.

Estimate:£10,019.12

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