Opera Gallery London will open “Fernando Botero: In Praise of an Amplified World” on October 12th, marking the first solo exhibition of the Colombian artist’s work in London since 2015
Coinciding with the opening of Frieze London, the show continues through November 12th, and brings together paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Works on view will span nearly six decades, from the mid-1960s to the final year of Botero’s life before his passing in 2023.
The exhibition, with scenography by designer Cécile Degos, argues against reading Botero’s signature style as caricature, framing volume instead as the artist’s central subject. Rather than simply enlarging his figures and objects, the gallery says, Botero “amplified” them, using shifts in proportion to intensify their physical presence. That approach traces back to a 1957 realization: while painting a mandolin, Botero found that shrinking its rosette made the instrument’s body appear far larger. He later credited that discovery with unlocking his entire visual language.
The show also underscores Botero’s lifelong engagement with art history. He worked as a copyist at the Museo del Prado in Madrid in his youth, selling copies of paintings by Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya to support himself, and the exhibition traces a continuing dialogue in his work with those artists as well as Piero della Francesca and Pablo Picasso.
“Fernando Botero created a visual language that is instantly recognisable yet endlessly nuanced,” Opera Gallery founder Gilles Dyan said in a statement. “Bringing together works across more than six decades, this exhibition highlights the remarkable consistency of his artistic vision and the diversity of his achievements.”
Botero has seen his market grow substantially since his death. According to the Artnet Price Database, total auction sales of his work reached an all-time high of $53.8 million in 2024, the same year his auction record was set at Christie’s with the $5.1 million sale of his 1979 painting The Musicians.
The London show will follow “Botero in New York,” an exhibition organized with the Botero family on view at Sotheby’s Breuer building this summer, through September 7th. That show traces how the artist’s years in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and ’60s helped shape the voluptuous, flattened style that would become known as Boterismo.
