Historic Botero work to be auctioned in Bogotá

This is “Jarrón con flores” (Vase with Flowers), painted in 1956, a key year in the master’s career. There are also pieces by David Manzur, Olga de Amaral and Alejandro Obregón

On Thursday, November 21, at eight o’clock in the evening, Bogotá Auctions will hold the auction of 80 works of Colombian and Latin American art, modern and contemporary, among which stands out “Jarrón con flores” (Vase with Flowers) by Fernando Botero, painted in 1956, a key year in the master’s career.

“Known for having been on the cover, in the year of its creation, of an issue of the prestigious magazine Lámpara, the work reflects Botero’s peculiar searches around the theme of volume and is characterized by intense color and a composition that is both complex and balanced,” explains Alessandro Armato, director of the art department of Bogotá Auctions.

Two iconic works in gold by Olga de Amaral, Vestigio (1995) and Espejo (2005), also stand out as other highlights of the auction. The recent opening of a major retrospective of the Bogotá artist at the Cartier Foundation in Paris is only the latest in a series of tributes by major international institutions to one of the most acclaimed and sought-after female artists in the world, who has found her own unmistakable voice in contemporary art through a conceptual reworking of the ancient artisanal practice of weaving.

Armato also points out that “one of the star pieces of the auction is the bronze La música (The Music) by the Chiquinquirá sculptor Rómulo Rozo. Made in Paris in 1925, this work is of a moving beauty and has important formal relationships with the famous Bachué, which the artist carved in that same 1925 and which, today, has been consolidated as one of the greatest milestones of Colombian art of the 20th century. Among Rozo's latest achievements are the successful exhibition of Bachué at the last Venice Biennale and the fact that the work has recently been acquired by the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), an institution that has one of the most complete and outstanding collections of Latin American art in the world."

David Manzur

According to Charlotte Pieri, director of Bogotá Auctions, "another outstanding lot is an abstracting canvas from 1967 by David Manzur, another sacred monster of Colombian art of the 20th and 21st centuries, who in recent years has been the object of important tributes, such as the one paid to him in the last edition of Artbo or the voluminous monograph dedicated to him by Eugenio Viola. With a lyrical expressionism not devoid of informalist traces, Nacimiento del pez - this is the title of the work - attests to the period of greatest international projection and greatest historical-artistic importance of the artist, that is, the sixties. At the same time, the piece, with its echoes of Obregon, constitutes a valuable document of that extraordinary and unrepeatable season of Colombian art in which Manzur, together with Obregón, Negret, Ramírez Villamizar and other masters, contributed to consolidate the historic transition of national art towards modernism.”
Also of great relevance is a large-format vintage photograph by Fernell Franco, one of the greatest Latin American photographers and one of the main exponents of the increasingly valued Cali art scene of the seventies and eighties, alongside names such as Óscar Muñoz and Ever Astudillo. In black and white, except for a suggestive area in color, the piece belongs to the Billares series, where the artist explores the humanity that frequents these peculiar urban spaces of popular style. Fernell Franco enjoys particular attention in France, where his work has been exhibited at the Cartier Foundation in Paris (2016) and at the last photography festival in Arles, among others, notes Alessandro Armato.

The invitation to the public, to those who are in the Colombian capital, to national and international tourists, to art lovers, to collectors and to anyone who wants to visit the exhibition of works, is to do so in person, during the week, from Monday to Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and/or on Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free, there is no cost.
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