For Botero, Bigger Is Better -- Retrospective Spans Physical, Cultural Distances

Summary

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Massive. That's the only way to describe "The Baroque World of Fernando Botero," currently on exhibit at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Many of the paintings and sculptures, all culled from the Colombian painter's personal collection, are physically huge, dominating entire gallery walls or, in the case of three bronze sculptures called "Smoking Woman," "The Rape of Europa," and "Hand," the courtyard outside the Brooks' main entrance. Botero's subject matter - particularly his portraiture - is also outsized, exaggerated, and inflated to superhuman proportions.

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For Botero, Bigger Is Better -- Retrospective Spans Physical, Cultural Distances

Initially, Botero's images seem counterintuitive. The rotund, Rubenesque human forms that fill his canvases certainly have little in common with the current corps of celebrity bods. But at second glance, these are ...

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