I had an uncle who took me to the ring in Medellin when I was 15 years old. In school, we had someone who taught us how to bullfight.
From Fernando Botero
Before anything else, I started painting bulls and matadors. That was my initiation to paint.
Bullfights have so much color. Not just the matador but also the bull, the arena, and the public. It's all very festive.
Bullfights are a very cultural thing. I know many people think it's cruel, but so many things are cruel. Hunting, the electric chair, wars. These are all cruel things as well.
Nobody ever told me, 'Art is this.' This was good luck in a way because I would have had to spend half of my life forgetting everything that I had been told, which is what happens with most students in schools of fine arts.
I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.
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