He was born in Medellín on April 19, 1932, the second of three children of David Botero Mejía and Flora Angulo de Botero. From an early age, he was influenced by the baroque style of colonial churches. He began his primary education at the Ateneo Antioqueño and continued his secondary education at the Bolivar School.

Driven by his family, Botero developed a deep appreciation for bullfighting since childhood, which led him to explore drawing.

At the age of 16, he got his first job as an illustrator for the newspaper El Colombiano. After finishing high school in Medellín, he moved to Bogotá in 1951. There, he held his first individual exhibition of watercolors, gouaches, inks and oils. His first works of portraits and landscapes showed a very loose brushstroke.

In the early 1960s, Botero settled in New York, where his paintings were very successful in the U.S. art market.

In 1952, he won second prize at the IX National Artists’ Salon with the painting “Frente al mar”. Subsequently, he traveled to Europe to continue his artistic training, residing for approximately four years in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Florence.

Between 1961 and 1973, he took up residence in New York. He would later live in Paris, alternating his stay in the French capital with extended periods in Pietrasanta and his estate in the Cundinamarca town of Tabio. Around 1964, Botero ventured for the first time into the field of sculpture.

For several decades, Botero was one of the most important living artists internationally. After seven decades of artistic career, he became the most recognized living artist in the world, the most published, with the largest number of institutional and museum exhibitions, as well as the most expensive and most transacted living Latin American artist.

From his work emerges an artistic movement, Boterism, which consists of distorting dimensions and working with large volumes.

Fernando Botero passed away on September 15, 2023 at his home in Monaco.