The most famous of all Colombian artists is Fernando Botero
(born April 19, 1932), known for his bloated, blimp-like
figures. His series of 'fat people' shows skill, humour,
whimsicality, kindness, cruelty and biting satire all at the
same time. As a youth, Botero attended a school for matadors for
several years, but his true interest was in art. While still a
teenager, he began painting and was inspired by the pre-
Columbian and Spanish colonial art that surrounded him as well
as by the political work of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. His
own paintings were first exhibited in 1948, and two years later,
in Bogotá, he had his first one-man show. While studying
painting in Madrid in the early 1950s, he made his living by
copying paintings housed in the Prado Museum—particularly those
of his idols at the time, Francisco de Goya and Diego
Velázquez—and selling them to tourists. He spent much of the
rest of the decade studying the art treasures of Paris and
Florence. Throughout the 1950s Botero began experimenting