The exhibition ‘Fernando Botero, the evolution of a teacher’ brings together part of the private collection of more than 300 advertising posters.
Miami (EFE).- An anthological exhibition with 45 artistic advertising posters, some of them rare large-format pieces, by Colombian creator Fernando Botero can be seen starting this Wednesday at the Doral Museum of Contemporary Art (DORCAM), a city near Miami (Florida).
The sample Fernando Botero, the evolution of a master It brings together part of the private collection of more than 300 advertising posters that the Colombian dealer Enrique Michelsen owns and has been expanding since 1974, the year in which he was given the first poster by the Medellín artist.
“My life was and continues to be an exciting search for all of Botero’s advertising posters destined for sale in museums, galleries and exhibitions or to hang on the walls of cities around the world,” Michelsen, 75, explains enthusiastically to Efe. years, based in the town of Weston (southeast Florida).
Rarities and large posters
A passion cultivated for almost five decades that Michelsen now wants to share with all lovers of art and the creative universe of Botero, who, at almost 90 years of age, “is still active and working every day at his home in Monaco,” he says. the collector.
Michelsen’s personal selection thus becomes a journey that allows the visitor to understand the evolution of the figure of Botero (Medellín, 1932) and of art from the second half of the 20th century to the present day.
From posters like the one dedicated to the 1977 World Theater Festival in Nancy (France) to 1.80-meter-high posters “to hang on the walls of the streets, which were never for sale”, the impression made by this exhibition It is “tremendous”, he does not hesitate to affirm.
“People know the importance of Botero, but they can’t imagine how international it has been and it is until they see this exhibition” with posters from all over the world… “except from Australia,” he says humorously.
“With few exceptions, they are all rarities, hard-to-find posters, some -he says- almost impossible to get anywhere”, such as the poster on the cover of a book by the Monte Carlo Opera, of which only one hundred copies were published for theater subscribers.
Picasso and Botero, face to face at an exhibition in France
This journey through the evolution of Botero’s work through graphic art reveals the essential themes of his colorful and fresh figurative world: bullfighting, religion, the nude or nature.
The exhibition, held in coordination with Adriana Meneses Art and David Restrepo Art, underlines the “importance of Botero throughout the world, how his work is recognizable among all artists. You will never confuse him with other artists. Nobody does something similar”, he points out.
A document of the artist’s life
Although Michelsen began his collection of posters as a hobby, today it is a document of the artist’s life that reveals the extraordinary dimension of his creative career, an x-ray of his style.
For the Colombian collector, this graphic exhibition, which will be open until February 28, also allows to know the “enormous success of Botero in his exhibitions, with record attendance continuously” and how he is still experimenting with his work.
A very visual, figurative, “primary” work that “people understand” and appreciate, he comments, adding that, in that sense, “everyone understands a painting by Botero”, although later his work has supporters and detractors, such as “It always happens like this all your life.”
His passion as a collector is such that Michelsen has also accumulated almost a hundred Botero exhibition catalogues, as well as numerous tickets to exhibitions and all kinds of gift items inspired by the Colombian’s work.
A mural by Fernando Botero will be exhibited at the Museo de Antioquia in Medellín
He evokes how his enthusiasm for the great Colombian master arose, almost by chance, in 1974. “I was starting to sell art then, and a friend of a marqueter who Botero gave away posters for his work gave me one.”
That was his first Botero art poster, which was followed by the purchase of new ones in Paris galleries: “There came a time when I wrote to museums and exhibitions to get their posters,” says Michelsen, who only regrets that today he no longer the manufacture of posters for exhibitions is not as frequent as before.
Regarding those exhibited at DORCAM, “some are magnificent and others… not so good for photography, like the poster for a gallery show in Buenos Aires whose photo “with hair is reproduced on the poster,” he laughs.
A friend of Botero’s, with whom he speaks with some frequency, Michelsen assures that the master lives working motivated and vigorously and that, should death come, he would like to be found painting, like Picasso.
For Marcelo Llobell, director of DORCAM, the exhibition allows the viewer to “observe the master’s work in parallel with the evolution of the art of communication and graphic design in five decades.”
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