Botero Museum: dimensions determine our perceptions!

The Botero Museums, both in Bogota and in Medellin, are some of the top tourist attractions due to artist’s worldwide fame. His sculptures, from the Park Avenue in New York to Champs Elysée in Paris, are worth millions of dollars. This collection of more than hundred Botero paintings and a hand sculpture at the entrance of the museum, along with some of his personal collection of Picasso, Chagall, Miro, are all donations of the artist to this public museum, which you can visit free of charge. 

The museum in Medellin with a square where you see more than 20 of his sculptures is like an open air museum. But why do we have so much fun at this place, looking at all these ‘fat’ people? What makes us laugh about them? Mona Lisa, self portrait of Botero painting a model (his wife), the infanta in Velazquez’s Las Meninas, the President and the First Lady, the woman on her bed holding a paper with slices of orange on the bed, the guerrilla fighters relaxing on the hammock, the dancing couple. Each one of them looks like having a different character than we might know, the President doesn’t look that serious, nor do the fighters look that dangerous!