Adam and Eve, Fernando Botero, 1989, Oil on canvas, Museo Botero. Bogota.
Botero is a Colombian figurative artist and sculptor. Born in 1932, he grew up in Madellin with its Spanish colonial religious imagery and baroque architecture.
His exaggerated corpulent figures combine the excess of baroque with the social realism of the Mexican muralists Rivera and Siqueiros as he comments on the human condition and political instability.
Botero has often turned to the Bible for inspiration and made several representations of Adam and Eve in painting and in sculpture. In this piece he breaks from European tradition and has fruit in the hands of both figures as they face each other.
