https://pixabay.com/photos/colombia-bogota-city-2434911/
Facts in Brief
The Republic of Colombia lies in the north-west of South America, with the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Its continental neighbours are Venezuela and Brazil to the east, and Peru and Ecuador to the south, while Panama connects it with Central America. The coastal areas have a tropical rainforest climate, the plateaux are temperate, and in the Andes mountains there are areas of permanent snow. Total average annual rainfall is 2,676 mm (105 ins). The language is Spanish. Almost all of the inhabitants profess Christianity, and around 87% are Roman Catholics. The national flag (proportions 2 by 3) has three horizontal stripes, of yellow (one-half of the depth) over dark blue over red. The capital is Bogotá.
Population: 50,000,000 (2020 estimate)
Religion (2018 estimate): Colombia is primarily Christian, with 73% of the population representing Roman Catholicism and 14% Protestant. 10% of the country identifies as non-religious.
Language: most Colombians speak Spanish and it’s the country’s official language
Colombia declared independence from Spain on July 20, 1810 which is now celebrated as its independence day. Their independence was recognized on August 7, 1819.
Image Citation: Country Flag (Colombia), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 29 October 2020 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/co.FLAG
Citation: Location, Climate, Language, Religion, Flag, Capital (Colombia), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 29 October 2020 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/co.is.2
The Land
The Coastal Lowlands - Pacific coast
The Caribbean Lowlands stretch along the coast of the Caribbean and is where most trade occurs. Because of this, 20% of people live here.
The Andes Mountains cover western Colombia
The Eastern Plains - cover about 60 percent of Colombia but only 2% of the people live in this region.
Images from World Book Online
Harvesting Coffee Beans
"Coffee ranks among Colombia's most important export crops. Colombia is one of the largest coffee-producing countries in the world. The worker shown here picks coffee beans on a farm in Sasaima, near Bogota."
Harvesting coffee beans [Online image]. (2020). In World Book Advanced, Retrieved from https://www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/media?id=pc314770
Cartagena, Colombia
"Colombia was settled by Spaniards in the early 1500's. The port city of Cartagena, shown here, still has buildings dating from the colonial period. The Spanish explorer Pedro de Heredia founded Cartagena in 1533."
Cartagena, Colombia [Online image]. (2020). In World Book Advanced, Retrieved from https://www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/media?id=pc367532
Bogotá, Colombia
"Bogotá is the capital and largest city of Colombia. The Santamaría bullring, shown here, is one of the city's key points of interest. The Park Towers, designed by Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona, rise beside the bullring."
Bogotá, Colombia [Online image]. (2020). In World Book Advanced, Retrieved from https://www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/media?id=pc369304
Caño Cristales
"The waters of Colombia's Caño Cristales (Crystal Spout) bloom with vibrant color each autumn. The river's colors come from black rocks, green algae, yellow sands, and blue waters. The distinctive vibrant red comes from a tropical riverweed called macarenia clavigera that has adapted to the river's rushing waters and rocky riverbed."
Caño Cristales in south-central Colombia [Online image]. (2020). In World Book Advanced, Retrieved from
https://www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/media?id=pc373361
World Book Online
A general encyclopedia covering a wide range of topics. It is part of the Tennessee Electronic Library (TEL).
Music Books from UT's Catalog
Musical ImagiNation by Call Number: E-Book
Rites, Rights and Rhythms by
Colombia has the largest black population in the Spanish-speaking world, but Afro-Colombians have long remained at the nation's margins. Their recent irruption into the political, social, and cultural spheres is tied to appeals to cultural difference, dramatized by the traditional music ofColombia's majority-black Southern Pacific region, often called currulao. Yet that music remains largely unknown and unstudied despite its complexity, aesthetic appeal, and social importance.Rites, Rights and Rhythms: A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia's Black Pacific is the first book-length academic study of currulao, inquiring into the numerous ways it has been used: to praise the saints, to grapple with modernization, to dramatize black politics, to perform the nation, togenerate economic development and to provide social amelioration in a context of war. Author Michael Birenbaum Quintero draws on both archival and ethnographic research to trace these and other understandings of how currulao has been understood, illuminating a history of struggles over the meaningsof currulao that are also struggles over the meanings of blackness in Colombia.Moving from the eighteenth century to the present, Rites, Rights and Rhythms asks how musical meaning is made, maintained, and sometimes abandoned across historical contexts as varied as colonial slavery, twentieth-century national populism, and neoliberal multiculturalism. What emerges is both arich portrait of one of the hemisphere's most important and understudied black cultures and a theory of history traced through the performative practice of currulao.
Call Number: ML3575.C7 Q54 2019
Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop by Call Number: ML3917.C65 D46 2012
The City of Musical Memory by
Explores the history of salsa in the city of Cali, examines its local adoption in relation to other musical styles in the region, and discusses the spread of salsa to other Latin American cities.
Call Number: ML3918.S26 W38 2002
Modernity and Colombian Identity in the Music of Carlos Vives y la Provincia by
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, a great number of TV shows and music acts blossomed in Colombia, all of which resorted to regional identity as the narrative core for a renewed idea of national identity. Among them was "Clasicos de la provincial," an album by Colombian singer Carlos Vives and his band La Provincia (1993), which marked the beginning of a successful career that has spanned nearly three decades. Vives´s work not only earned much deserved recognition in the musical industry from the beginning, but most importantly, has come to be renowned as a landmark in the cultural history of Colombia. This book is the first in-depth analysis focused on the creation and production process of Vives´s work, its main musical and literary features, and its influence on other musicians and in the construction of a narrative about national identity that is still relevant today. More than fifty interviews with Vives and members of the band, musicians, journalists, radio programmers, musical producers, and other key players of the process, together with an extensive review of hundreds of documents, are the sources for this book, which earned its authors a national award in Colombia (2015).
Call Number: ML420.V48 S48 2020
The Art Song in Latin America by
Wilson's The Art Song in Latin America-Selected Works by 20th Century Composers includes art songs by 20th-century Latin Americans, including important composers such as Carlos Guastavino (Argentina), Carlos Chávez (Mexico) and Juan Orrego-Salas (Chile). The first anthology of its kind published in the United States, it includes translations, textual transcriptions of the Spanish using International Phonetic Alphabet,and historical and biographical entries for each song. A singer,musicologist, and voice teacher with extensive experience teaching in Latin America as a Fulbright Scholar, Kathleen Wilson understands the need for a practical and accessible source of vocal literature by Latin American composers. As a vocal pedagogue, Wilson has been careful to choose songs that are technically appropriate for young singers and sophisticated enough musically for professionals.
Call Number: M1619 .A7689 1998
Colombian Music at a Glance
Colombia is known as “the land of a thousand rhythms” for its rhythmic and musical diversity. Across a dozen geographical and cultural regions, Colombia’s musical genres and instruments vary greatly. Just a few genres include Cumbia, Vallenato, Currulao, Juga, and Champeta. Some instruments used in Colombian music include the accordion, the tambora bass drum, the guitar, and Llanos’ harp.
A blind man plays the accordion to entertain spectators gathered to watch the 53rd Vuelta a Colombia, which took place against a backdrop of civil war and violence. The bicycle race is guarded along its entire route by heavily armed Colombian soldiers as it crosses provinces controlled variously by the Revolutionary Army of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Paramilitaries (AUC).
Music of Colombia
Books from the UT Collection
Coffee in Colombia, 1850-1970 by
In this book, Marco Palacios explores the history of Colombia as a coffee-producer, and the implications that coffee has had for its economy, society, and politics since the middle of the nineteenth century. He provides a history of the commercialization of the crop, and relates it to the general evolution of Colombian society, an evolution often determined by coffee even in areas remote from the crop itself. The book also covers the development of the specific institutions that have been set up to manage coffee affairs, and their role in the Colombian state. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century coffee has been the mainstay of the Colombian economy, and no historian, economist, or sociologist interested in the country can escape its importance; nor can anyone interested in the commodity ignore Colombia. This is the first work on the subject to appear in English.
Call Number: HD9199 .C62 P3413 2002
Out of War by
Civil war has raged in Colombia for more than forty years, touching millions of lives with despair. Colombia's children have lost their parents and homes, their schools and security. Yet today young Colombians are among the leaders of efforts to end the fighting. Nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Children's Movement for Peace is a coalition of courageous young people working together to build a better future. Here, nine of its members tell their haunting stories.
Call Number: 305.23C36o
Black Cookstove: Meditations on Literature, Culture, and Cuisine in Colombia by Call Number: GT2853.C7 P3813Winner of the 2006 Andrés Bello Award for Memory and Ibero-American Thought In this evocatively written book, Germán Patiño Ossa presents the cultural universe and national identities of Colombia through the lens of traditional cuisine. Focusing on the Cauca Valley, a fertile area in southwestern Colombia where Spanish, Native American, and African communities converged over the centuries, Patiño Ossa studies the food of these communities and its place in the region's culture. Using Jorge Isaacs's nineteenth-century Romantic novel María as a realistic source for cultural practices among Colombia's slaveholding elite, Patiño Ossa examines cooking, kitchens, and the division of labor; flora and fauna; agriculture, hunting, and fishing; hospitality; slavery; and literature. Through the community of Afro-descendants who appear in Isaacs's novel, Patiño Ossa shows how this culinary culture, originating in the cookstoves used by female black slaves, resulted in the Creole fusions that characterize this geographical region of Latin America. Cooking and food, as Patiño Ossa eloquently demonstrates, are essential for us to understand the process of the formation of culture and the origins, evolution, and effects of transculturation. Innovative, engaging, and accompanied by an introductory preface by the author, this English-language edition of Patiño Ossa's prizewinning book is a model for food and cultural studies that will appeal to scholars, students, and the intellectually curious.
Food
A typical meal in Colombia can include:
Appetizer - a favorite soup, ajiaco, made with chicken, potatoes, and guasca (Galinsoga parviflora)
Main Dish - bandeja paisa (red beans, white rice, ground meat, chicharon (fried pork belly/rounds), fried egg, plantain, chorizo (pork sausage), arepa (corn biscuit), black pudding, avocado and lemon
Side dish - papas criollas al horno (roasted Andean potatoes)
Dessert - bocadillo (guava jelly - Colombian confection made with guava pulp and panela)
The Routledge Concise History of Latino/a Literature by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 0415667887Publication Date: 2013-01-30The Routledge Concise History of Latino/a Literature presents the first comprehensive overview of these popular, experimental and diverse literary cultures. Frederick Luis Aldama traces a historical path through Latino/a literature, examining both the historical and political contexts of the works, as well as their authors and the readership. He also provides an enlightening analysis of: the differing sub-groups of Latino/a literature, including Mexican American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican American, Dominican American, and Central and South American émigré authors established and emerging literary trends such as the postmodern, historical, chica-lit storytelling formats and the graphic novel key literary themes, including gender and sexuality, feminist and queer voices, and migration and borderlands. The author's methodology and interpretation of a wealth of information will put this rich and diverse area of literary culture into a new light for scholars. The book's student-friendly features such as a glossary, guide to further reading, explanatory text boxes and chapter summaries, make this the ideal text for anyone approaching the area for the first time.- "Food Sovereignty, Gender and Everyday Practice: The Role of Afro-Colombian Women in Sustaining Localised Food Systems" byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2020
- "Fighting Change: Interactive Pressures, Gender, and Livelihood Transformations in a contested Region of the Colombian Caribbean" byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2021
Map of Colombia
Image Citation: Country Map (Colombia), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 29 October 2020 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/co.MAP
Colombian Literature
Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) was a Colombian novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Known as Gabo or Gabito throughout Latin America for being one of the most significant writers of his time, Márquez won the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. His work popularized the style known as magic realism, the use of magical elements and events in ordinary and realistic situations, and can be seen in One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Márquez was called the greatest Colombian who ever lived by former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos.
The Cambridge Introduction to Gabriel Garciá Márquez by Call Number: PQ8180.17.A73 Z717The Colombian Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1927), wrote two of the great novels of the twentieth century, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. As novelist, short story writer and journalist, García Márquez has one of literature's most instantly recognizable styles and since the beginning of his career has explored a consistent set of themes, revolving around the relationship between power and love. His novels exemplify the transition between modernist and post-modernist fiction and have made magical realism one of the most significant and influential phenomena in contemporary writing. Aimed at students of Latin American and comparative literature, this book provides essential information about García Márquez's life and career, his published work in literature and journalism, and his political engagement. It connects the fiction effectively to the writer's own experience and explains his enduring importance in world literature.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Call Number: PQ8180.17 .A73 Z6863"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Thus begins Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, one of the twentieth century's most lauded works of fiction. In Gabriel García Márquez, literary scholar Stephen M. Hart provides a succinct yet thorough look into García Márquez's life and the political struggles of Latin America that have influenced his work, from Love in the Time of Cholera to Memories of My Melancholy Whores. By interviewing García Márquez's family in Cuba, Hart was able to gain a unique perspective on his use of "creative false memory," providing new insight into the magical realism that dominates García Márquez's oeuvre. Using these interviews and his original research, Hart defines five ingredients that are critical to García Márquez's work: magical realism, a shortened and broken portrayal of time, punchy one-liners, dark and absurd humor, and political allegory. These elements, as described by Hart, illuminate the extraordinary allure of García Márquez's work and provide fascinating insight into his approach to writing. Hart also explores the divisions between García Márquez's everyday life and his life as a writer, and the connection in his work between family history and national history. Gabriel García Márquez presents an original portrait of this well-renowned writer and is a must-read for fans of his work as well as those interested in magical realism, Latin American fiction, and modern literature.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Call Number: PQ8180.17.A73 O53A classic of world literature for all time--and probably Marquez's most famous work. The first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race . . . with more lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man.--Washington Post Book World.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Call Number: PQ8180.17.A73 C6813"EXQUISITELY HARROWING . . . . Very strange and brilliantly conceived. . . . A sort of metaphysical murder mystery. . . . The murder will stand among the innumerable murders of modern literature as one of the best and most powerfully rendered." A mysterious and haunting tale of romance and murder, that begins with the marriage of a man and a woman in love. But when he inexplicably mistreats his beloved on the night of the wedding, he is in turn murdered by her brothers, and we are left with a strange sense of inevitability and passions gone terribly awry. From the Paperback edition.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Call Number: PQ8180.17.A73 A813From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people's lives together for more than fifty years. In the story of Florentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare his undying love to the beautiful Fermina Daza, whom he lost to Dr. Juvenal Urbino so many years before, García Márquez has created a vividly absorbing fictional world, as lush and dazzling as a dream and as real and immediate as our own deepest longings. Now available for the first time in the Contemporary Classics series!- Streaming Video: Gabriel García Márquez byCall Number: VideoIn this interview with Silvia Lemus, Gabriel García Márquez discusses his life and work from a highly personal plane.
Literature Cont.
Álvaro Mutis (b.1923)
"Known as a poet most of his life, Mutis, a native of Bogotá, blossomed as one of Colombia's major novelists during the 1980s and 1990s. He has published more than fifteen books of poetry and fiction. Mutis began publishing poetry in the 1940s, and continued in the 1950s and 1960s, describing a decaying world, often in a satirical tone. Many of his prose poems are narrated in the bitter and ironic voice of a character named Maqroll el Gaviero. One of Mutis's major books of poetry is Los trabajos perdidos (1965). He has lived most of his adult life in Mexico."
La nieve del almirante available for checkout in Hodges Library
Image Citation: "Álvaros Mutis" by Juan Manuel Herrera is licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Citation: Williams, R. L. (2008). Mutis, Alvaro (1923–). In J. Kinsbruner & E. D. Langer (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (2nd ed., Vol. 4, pp. 759-760). Charles Scribner's Sons. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3078903848/GVRL?u=tel_s_tsla&sid=GVRL&xid=fdae6857
Gabriel García Márquez (b.1927)
"Márquez is Colombia's best-known novelist and short-story writer. The two most important years of García Márquez's career are 1967, when his masterpiece Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970) brought him overnight fame, and 1982, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. The people, landscape, and atmosphere of the coast of Colombia are an important aspect of García Márquez's work. Many of his novels and short stories are set in the coastal towns of Colombia, portrayed either through the mythical town of Macondo or set in the colonial city of Cartagena."
Novellas. English: Collected novellas available for checkout at Hodges Library
Image Citation: "Gabriel Garcia Marquez wearing a Guayabera" by Unknown author is licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Citation: Watson, Maida. "García Márquez, Gabriel (1927–)." Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, edited by Jay Kinsbruner and Erick D. Langer, 2nd ed., vol. 3, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008, pp. 392-394. Gale eBooks, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3078902427/GVRL?u=tel_s_tsla&sid=GVRL&xid=8e5efacb. Accessed 1 Nov. 2020.
Jorge Isaacs (1837-1895)
"More than as a poet, explorer, politician, or ethnologist, Isaacs is known as a novelist for his only and unique novel. María (1867; Maria, 1890) won him a place in history and in the hearts of millions around the world. Published in every Spanish-speaking country and translated into many languages, María caused critics to proclaim it the "most exquisite sentimental novel" and "one of the most beautiful creations and … closest to perfection" for its "clear aesthetic conscience." Latin America, in its postindependence search for identity, found itself in María's landscape and humane romantic soul."
María is available for checkout at Hodges Library
Image Citation: "Retrato Jorge Isaacs" by Gobernación Valle Del Cauca is licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Citation: Suárez-Torres, J. D. (2008). Isaacs, Jorge (1837–1895). In J. Kinsbruner & E. D. Langer (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 877-878). Charles Scribner's Sons. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3078902933/GVRL?u=tel_s_tsla&sid=GVRL&xid=ef3c0dd8
Art & Architecture
Mona Lisa, Age Twelve by Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero, Colombian, born 1932. (1959). Mona Lisa, Age Twelve. [Painting]. Retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/asset/AMOMA_10312310775
Statue at San Agustin Park
(Image: 1941). Statue at San Agustin Park. Retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/asset/AYALE_PEABODYIG_10313279378
Bird-form finial
Colombia, Northwest Colombia, Sinú region, Zenú culture, South American; Pre-Columbian; Sinú, South American; Columbian. (c. A.D. 500-1500). Bird-form finial. [Other]. Retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/asset/AMICO_DALLAS_103842431
A portrait of an elderly man. by Stephan Vanfleteren
Stephan Vanfleteren. (2006). A portrait of an elderly man.. Retrieved from https://library.artstor.org/asset/APANOSIG_10313585063
Art Music, Traditional Music, and Popular Music of Colombia
- Grove Music Online: ColombiaRead more about the Art Music, Traditional Music, and Popular Music of Colombia!
Read about the Art & Architecture of Colombia!
- Grove Art Online: ColombiaRead and discover artists such as Fernando Botero, Debora Arango, Doris Salcedo, and many more!
Barranquilla’s Carnival
Barranquilla’s Carnival is one of the biggest festivals in the world and is celebrated four days before Holy Week in Barranquilla. The festival includes: dancing (Spanish paloteo, African Congo, indigenous mico y micas); music (Colombian music, cumbia (folk traditions)), and masquerade parades. Colombia’s national congress proclaimed that the Carnival of Barranquilla is a cultural masterpiece. The slogan for the festival is “Those who live it are those who enjoy it.”
The carnival queen during the Battle of Flowers (two groups of rich families riding carriages decorated with flowers).
Congo dancing group
- "Performing Race in the Barranquilla Carnival: The Case of the Negritas Puloy de Montecristo byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2019
- En Colombia se baila así: Intersectional Bodies, Race, Gender and Nation Building in the Barranquilla Carnival byCall Number: Online Dissertation/ThesisPublication Date: 2013
Contextualizing Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies and Developing Countries by Call Number: E-BookSee chapter titled "Barranquilla's Carnival: the Place Where Identity Meets Societal Entrepreneurship"- "Burlesquing Blackness: Racial Significations in Carnivals and the Carnivalesque on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast" byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2019
Alejandro Obregón
Alejandro Obregón 1920-1992
After being born in Colombia and moving to Spain, England, and Boston, Obregón decided to stay in France until about 1955. Here he painted his piece Still Life in Yellow, and within this piece we can see his personal style and technical ability. Obregón utilizes color within his geometric forms and controlled expressionism. Over the period of four decades, Obregón incorporated into his painting a repertory of themes that transcend literary reference and are unmistakably Colombian in character. His work Dead Student works as an allusion to the excesses of the dictatorship within Colombia, later won him the Guggenheim Prize for Colombia.
https://www.latinamericanart.com/en/artist/alejandro-obregon/
Manifestos and Polemics in Latin American Modern Art by Call Number: N6502.5 .M36ISBN: 9780826357878Publication Date: 2017-02-15Bringing together sixty-five primary documents vital to understanding the history of art in Latin America since 1900, Patrick Frank shows how modern art developed in Latin America in this important new work complementing his previous book, Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, Revised and Expanded Edition. Besides autobiographies, manifestos, interviews, and artists' statements, the editor has assembled material from videos, blogs, handwritten notes, flyers, lectures, and even an after-dinner speech. As the title suggests, many of the texts have a polemical or argumentative cast. In these documents, many of which appear in English for the first time, the artists themselves describe what they hope to accomplish and what they see as obstacles. Designed to show how modern art developed in Latin America, the documents begin with early modern expressions in the early twentieth century, then proceed through the avant-garde of the 1920s, the architectural boom of midcentury, and the Cold War years, and finally conclude with the postmodern artists in the new century.
Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero was born in 1932 and is a Colombian figurative sculptor. His style is called Boterismo and represents people in large, exaggerated volume to suggest political criticism and humor. Because his work is around the world, he is considered the most recognized and quoted living artist from Latin America. Some of his most notable works include: Mona Lisa, Age Twelve (1959), Pope Leo X (after Raphael) (1964), The Presidential Family (1967), The Dancers (1987), Death of Pablo Escobar (1999).
- Fernando Botero: Paintings and Drawings byCall Number: N6679.B6 A4Fernando Botero's development can now be traced back over a period of decades. The enjoyment of storytelling is apparent in many of his paintings, and can be compared to the narrative Baroque panels of his South American homeland.
The Art of Fernando Botero by Call Number: ND379.B6 B6813Fernando Botero (Medellin, Colombia, 1932) is the best known Latin American artist from the second half of the 20th century still active today. Coinciding with his 80th birthday, this publication pays tribute to the career of a painter, draughtsman and sculptor who has developed his own, instantly recognisable style, and who celebrates a remarkably vivid, vital reality through the exaltation of volume and colour. This biography will offer us an intimate and visual tour in Fernando Botero's art through the words of his son Juan Carlos Botero who outlines his father's place in contemporary art, examines the main themes in his work, and discusses his artistic principles.
