Fernando Botero
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Provenance
- Collection of Eduardo Trujillo
- Private Collection of Master Fernando Botero
- Acquired directly from the Artist
Literature
In “Man Playing Contrabass” we can see a reminiscence of Picasso’s musicians, but this composition also reminds us of the Medellín of the artist’s youth, the bars and canteens where Botero spend many Bohemian nights at the time he decided to become a painter. In a sense, Master Botero’s work is like an autobiography, but one told not through words written on a paper but rather through colors and forms framed in a canvas.
If many of Botero’s musicians convey the atmosphere of joy and festiveness of Colombia’s nightlife, in this piece we feel not only the artist’s love and nostalgia for his homeland but also the anguish and poverty he shared with those who aspired to make a living of art like himself. This monumental portrait of a contrabass player with his scores on the floor presents the anxiety and desolation of a street musician who plays alone in his home, without colleagues and without audience. In this sense it is perhaps a self-portrait of Botero as a young man, struggling to become a painter in a context uninterested in art, as was Colombia in the middle of the 20th century.